Welcome to this new issue of the Journal of Digital Media & Interaction. There is a dialectic between meaning and interaction, which dynamically alternate their position. The search for meaning promotes interaction, but at other times it is the interaction itself that allows for the construction of meaning.

Meaning and interaction mutually stimulate each other for the creation of an internal logic that allows the subject to create a procedural and/or identity logic, even in scenarios where the negativity of hate is the mobilizer, but also when the pursuit is happiness.

This issue of the Journal presents a set of texts that contribute to the understanding of the dialectical dynamic between meaning and interaction. In “The Game is Not Over: Relationships Between Ludic Appropriation and Production of Meaning in Video Games”, Emmanoel Ferreira presents the concepts of playful freedom and playful appropriation developed by Maude Bonenfant, to explore the relationships between ludic appropriation and the production of meaning in videogames.

Ana Catarina Monteiro and Miguel Carvalhais in “How we Construct Meaning in Interactive Digital Narratives: a structurally coupled relation” aim to understand how readers and systems couple with each other to generate meaning in the dynamic construction of interactive digital narratives, namely, through an interdisciplinary approach that combines the cognitive theory of enaction with the analysis of the narrative structure in Florence and Her Story.

The paper “Le jeu Plants Make People Happy: exploration de l'agentivité par la recherche-création” by Laureline Chiapello part of the concept of agency in video games to show that agency does not arise from a complex narrative structure nor from numerous interactions, but rather from the exchange between players and the game situation, which includes the game world and the environment beyond the game, such as the game creators. Also, in this article the idea of dialectic between meaning and interaction is present.

Luísa Pinto Felício and Paula Peres in “The Impact of TikTok on the Viralization of the Entertainment Industry - The Netflix´s Series Case” highlight the role of digital social networks in the propagation of content and access to entertainment, namely that TikTok asserts itself as a social network with a notorious, relevant and positive role in promoting the entertainment industry, in particular with regard to series from the streaming platform Netflix.

In “When the Late Victorian Period and YouTube Meet: A demonstration of digital media literacy”, Louisa Danielson presents a case study to explore the concept of media literacy and underline that we are parasocially connected and yet YouTube, as a social media platform, gives us the opportunity to enhance and connect our lives through the use of digital media literacy.

Xabier Martínez Rolán in “The Hate Speech on Instagram: An Analysis of Famous Women in Spain” analyzed cyberbullying against women on the Instagram platform to understand the behaviors of users (men, women, and fake accounts) in this social network. From the study it was evident the existence of hate speech on the Instagram, direct and indirect, focused on women.

Finally, in “Social Media and Egomuseum: A Conceptual Proposition” by Claudio Xavier develop and present the egomuseum concept to explain the (self)representation and musealization of the self as a process of (in)formation and authorship through images that are documented, collected, accumulated, and exposed in social media. Evidencing the platforms as places of promotion and crystallization of identities.

We hope this set of texts can contribute to understand the dynamic relationship between meaning and interaction in the construction and fruition of digital platforms.