Volume 8, No. 1 (2026) of Galactica Media: Journal of Media Studies is devoted to the theme “Crisis: Signs, Bodies, Institutions” and brings together studies that approach crisis as a multilayered media, cultural, and social phenomenon. At the centre of the issue are the ways in which crisis is symbolically articulated, experienced through embodiment, and consolidated in institutional forms: from climate communication and digital alienation to cinema, video games, and gender representations in the media.

The issue is conceived as an interdisciplinary space for analysing contemporary regimes of visibility, vulnerability, and power. The general theoretical section addresses the semiotics of the climate crisis, humanism and digital alienation, social discourses surrounding unmarried women, the signalling positioning of banking brands, and the reconstruction of masculinity in advertising. The cinema section turns to a feminist reading of Sibel (2018), representations of violence in Indian war cinema, and narratives of cultural loss in Turkish film. Separate sections are devoted to the ontology of video games, representations of women in the media, and a cultural-political reading of The Craft (1996).

This issue will be of interest to scholars of media, culture, visuality, philosophy, anthropology, and film, as well as to all those concerned with analysing crises as processes of meaning production, social affect, and institutional transformation.