An interdisciplinary and international roster of contributors foregrounds rural and remote communities as dynamic sites of innovation, struggle, and cultural (re)negotiation amid digitalization.

Although media scholarship has long privileged urban spaces, more research is needed to examine how digital technologies, platform infrastructures, and evolving media practices are reshaping life beyond metropolitan centers. Contributors employ a range of global case studies from Italy to Kazakhstan to The Lithium Triangle and beyond to explore how rural actors engage with platforms, navigate shifting information ecologies, sustain journalistic practices, and adapt to technological transformations in everyday life, governance, and agriculture.

Through these explorations, this volume positions rural media studies as a distinct and urgently needed subfield with the potential to challenge urban biases and widen the conceptual and methodological horizons of media research.

Rashid Gabdulhakov is an assistant professor in the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

Marc Esteve del Valle is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.