"We offer a comprehensive analysis of media advocacy, pointing out its challenges and limitations and build towards an argument for proposing a holistic conception of ‘advocacy communication’ for achieving social justice. Media advocacy faces several challenges in practice, as it is often inhibi
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ted by political and economic contexts, and in theory, through a conceptualization of participatory governance as elitist. Critical analyses raise additional challenges to the potential for media advocacy as an approach for social justice, facing concerns with representational practices. Recognizing these challenges, we propose a more comprehensive, yet reflective approach that we call ‘advocacy communication’ for social justice, not limited to the categorical understanding of different communication for social change strategies. By examining different cases of advocacy communication and relying on Sen’s freedom-centered approach, we demonstrate how advocacy must articulate the connections across freedoms “to” and freedoms “from” in ways that privilege agency in inclusion and representation." (Abstract)
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"Strengthening capacities in communication for development (C4D) and health communication is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and other global health and development goals. This chapter presents case studies of recent initiatives undertaken by the United Nations Children´s Fu
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nd (UNICEF) to demonstrate how the organization has evolved a multi-prong and multi-level approach to capacity development. The authors review key capacity development concepts and approaches in the literature and analyze UNICEF’s efforts using a capacity development framework developed for the health sector by Crisp, Swerissen and Duckett (2011) to classify the different approaches of capacity development used by UNICEF and understand the measurement areas to assess their progress. The chapter concludes with a reflection on lessons learned from UNICEF’s experience that the authors hope will be of relevance to other institutions and a set of recommendations for policy and practice related to capacity development for C4D and health communication." (Abstract)
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"We illustrate the principles and processes of gender transformative communication by presenting a case study of a long-running social change initiative spearheaded by Minga Perú, a community-based organization in the Peruvian Amazon. Applying a gender and power lens, we illustrate how communicatio
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n transforms existing gender structures. Specifically, we analyze the monumental shifts that are occurring in roles, norms, hierarchies and relationships between women and men in the Peruvian Amazon emanating from Minga’s gender transformative approach. Our analysis highlights gendered shifts at the individual, family, community and institutional level. Through our analysis we outline a communicative process for gender transformation, highlighting how the Minga approach contributes to multiple gender-related outcomes across health, violence, participation, agency and decision-making. We argue that each component of Minga’s process is essentially communicative in nature. Simply put, communication serves as both a means and an end to achieving gender transformation." (Abstract)
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"The ubiquitous presence of digital games has resulted in an expansion of the applications of these games from mere entertainment purposes to a great variety of serious purposes. In this edited volume, we narrow the scope of attention by focusing on what game theorist Ian Bogost has called 'persuasi
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ve games', that is, gaming practices that combine the dissemination of information with attempts to engage players in particular attitudes and behaviors. This volume offers a multifaceted reflection on persuasive gaming, that is, on the process of these particular games being played by players. The purpose is to better understand when and how digital games can be used for persuasion by further exploring persuasive games and some other kinds of persuasive playful interaction as well. The book critically integrates what has been accomplished in separate research traditions to offer a multidisciplinary approach to understanding persuasive gaming that is closely linked to developments in the industry by including the exploration of relevant case studies." (Publisher description)
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"We show that malicious COVID-19 content, including racism, disinformation, and misinformation, exploits the multiverse of online hate to spread quickly beyond the control of any individual social media platform. We provide a first mapping of the online hate network across six major social media pla
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tforms. We demonstrate how malicious content can travel across this network in ways that subvert platform moderation efforts. Machine learning topic analysis shows quantitatively how online hate communities are sharpening COVID-19 as a weapon, with topics evolving rapidly and content becoming increasingly coherent. Based on mathematical modeling, we provide predictions of how changes to content moderation policies can slow the spread of malicious content." (Abstract)
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"COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has led to a global pandemic. The World Health Organization has also declared an infodemic (ie, a plethora of information regarding COVID-19 containing both false and accurate information circulated on the internet). Hence, it has become critical to test the veracity
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of information shared online and analyze the evolution of discussed topics among citizens related to the pandemic. This research analyzes the public discourse on COVID-19. It characterizes risk communication patterns in four Asian countries with outbreaks at varying degrees of severity: South Korea, Iran, Vietnam, and India. We collected tweets on COVID-19 from four Asian countries in the early phase of the disease outbreak from January to March 2020. The data set was collected by relevant keywords in each language, as suggested by locals. We present a method to automatically extract a time-topic cohesive relationship in an unsupervised fashion based on natural language processing. The extracted topics were evaluated qualitatively based on their semantic meanings. This research found that each government's official phases of the epidemic were not well aligned with the degree of public attention represented by the daily tweet counts. Inspired by the issue-attention cycle theory, the presented natural language processing model can identify meaningful transition phases in the discussed topics among citizens. The analysis revealed an inverse relationship between the tweet count and topic diversity. This paper compares similarities and differences of pandemic-related social media discourse in Asian countries. We observed multiple prominent peaks in the daily tweet counts across all countries, indicating multiple issue-attention cycles. Our analysis identified which topics the public concentrated on; some of these topics were related to misinformation and hate speech. These findings and the ability to quickly identify key topics can empower global efforts to fight against an infodemic during a pandemic." (Abstract)
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"Agencies in charge of flood management use disaster reports (DRs) as the preferred source of information on past flooding events. A systematic survey of DRs prepared by Italian agencies suggests that DRs could be widely enhanced in view of targeting more effective communication to citizens, reinfor
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cing the communication pillar in civil protection planning and management, and improving the resilience of the population to extreme events. Without loss of the rigor and details required for all the usual technical uses of DRs, we suggest recompiling them in the form of ‘‘disaster tales’’ (DTs), as tools that offer wider knowledge of the events to improve people’s preparedness and self-protection behavior. Recent major flooding events have demonstrated the communication potential that videos and pictures taken by citizens have for risk perception and disaster preparedness. By watching and listening to what has happened the communication recipient can better understand the feelings of the people experiencing an emergency. The structure of the improved reports, we suggest, will finally integrate data, graphs, and maps with interactive tools and be able to present handier multimedia views of the events. Application to three case studies of flooding in Italy illustrates how to concretely implement the suggested disaster reports to create more readily accessible disaster tales." (Abstract)
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"Drawing on the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework, we sought to examine how leading health organizations use Instagram for communicating and engaging during the COVID-19 pandemic. We manually retrieved Instagram posts together with relevant metadata of four health organizations (WHO,
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CDC, IFRC, and NHS) shared between January 1, 2020, and April 30, 2020. Two coders manually coded the analytical sample of 269 posts related to COVID-19 on dimensions including content theme, gender depiction, person portrayal, and image type. We further analyzed engagement indices associated with the coded dimensions. Results: The CDC and WHO were the most active of all the assessed organizations with respect to the number of posts, reach, and engagement indices. Most of the posts were about personal preventive measures and mitigation, general advisory and vigilance, and showing gratitude and resilience. An overwhelming level of engagement was observed for posts representing celebrity, clarification, and infographics. Conclusions: Instagram can be an effective tool for health organizations to convey their messages during crisis communication, notably through celebrity involvement, clarification posts, and the use of infographics. There is much opportunity to strengthen the role of health organizations in countering misinformation on social media by providing accurate information, directing users to credible sources, and serving as a fact-check for false information." (Abstract)
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"The South African disaster response activities surpass risk reduction since the implementation of the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002 (DMA) and the National Disaster Management Framework of 2005 (NDMF). Risk reduction, in particular risk communication, remained unexploited until the occurrence o
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f coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The legislation and policy mandate a proactive approach for disaster management, requiring a focus on disaster risk reduction. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the significance of risk communication as a critical prevention and mitigatory strategy in disaster risk management, focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic. Key to risk communication success is ensuring adequate comprehension, accurate perception of the disseminated information, and compliance with regulations. Questions of trustworthiness, acceptability, effectiveness, and usefulness of messages and strategies communicated sought answers from the Bloemfontein population. Furthermore, the Agenda-setting Theory provided the grounding for the study. The study sample was picked in a stratified random sampling manner, using the confidence level and margin of error equation. A questionnaire survey was used to collect the data required to achieve the research objectives." (Abstract)
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"Pakistan suffered from a massive earthquake in October 2005 that caused the deaths of more than 87 000 people. As a result of this calamity, around 3.5 million affected people had no access to information. In these scenarios, community media became an important catalyst. In developing countries, ra
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dio had proved far more accessible and useful than any other medium. But because of this natural hazard, local media also suffered heavily as dozens of journalists died and media houses and press clubs were destroyed. The current study attempted to explore the role of frequency modulation (FM) radio stations working in the earthquake hit areas in Pakistan. These stations were temporarily setup to inform the victims about the rehabilitation and reconstruction plans of the agencies involved. The data has been collected qualitatively through five focus group discussions which were conducted in the earthquake affected areas. Twelve in-depth interviews were also conducted for this purpose with FM stations personnel. The results revealed that the FM radio stations played a very important role in the rehabilitation phase by providing vital information to the victims, relief agencies and government. Lifesaving information like weather updates, precautionary measures in the tents, public service announcements and encouraging messages provided some hope to the victims to restart a normal life, and also motivated the students to restart their studies in make shift schools. These FM networks became the voice of the affected people and helped a lot in bridging the communication gaps between the affected, relief agencies and government, and also ensured citizens’ participation in decision-making processes." (Abstract)
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"This analysis examines the methods of disinformation being used to prove Russia's scientific lead, while portraying Western compet-itors in a very negative light. Sputnik V is an instrument of "soft power" through which Russia is trying to gain influence worldwide. In order to evaluate how successf
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ul the Russian infor-mation policy was, this analysis examines the perception of the benefits of Sputnik V in six different countries. In early 2021, Kazakhstan’s and Serbia’s relations to Russia were positively affected. Similar opportunities would have existed for Germany and Slovakia, since both governments were very willing to cooperate with Russia. In the case of Germany, however, this opportunity was lost due to a lack of cooperation and transparency on Russia’s part. In Slovakia, the government crisis over the use of Sputnik V has had a detrimental effect. For France and Great Britain, neither an improvement of the epidemiological situation through the Russian vaccine nor a success of the overall Sputnik V campaign are expected. This analysis is based on 130 news reports from the Russian state-owned media RT and Sputnik, the international press and the Russian independent press." (Summary)
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"Internews designed the HRSM Amazon project to provide adequate information about COVID to vulnerable communities. Each local partner maintained relationships with indigenous communities and remote sectors that received inadequate state health care, had high rates of mis/disinformation, and lacked i
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nformation about the pandemic. Partners adapted project activities to these communities’ needs, providing information in their native languages and supporting community members to lead fact-based content production. For some communities, these trainings offered their first experiences ever in producing communications materials, and partners ensured indigenous values directly informed content creation with an intercultural approach. Internews observed the project’s direct and indirect positive impacts on shifting perspectives of indigenous organizations. For example, SERVINDI reported that when they first conducted their health diagnosis, indigenous communities rejected the vaccine; however, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) requested more vaccination information in their native languages following the campaign’s implementation. Similarly, communication narratives that placed traditional and Western medicine in dialogue helped communities consider alternative strategies for coping with the pandemic. Throughout HRSM Amazon’s 12-month timeframe, the project consistently evolved to adapt initiatives to community needs. To reach last-mile communities in Colombia and Guyana, for instance, partners stored audio on flash drives to play repeatedly over loudspeakers where internet was not available. The pandemic not only heightened the visibility of digital connectivity challenges, but it particularly amplified the health realities of the most remote indigenous communities ignored by the State. According to local organizations, health problems extend far beyond just COVID infections. Indigenous communities face limited medical presence or no medical supplies on a regular basis; for example, the Araona Territory previously lacked a health center nearby, so the population had not received medical attention for 15 years. CEJIS adapted its project activities to go beyond preventing COVID-19 transmission in the Araona communities, providing radio listeners and national media across Bolivia with health information and updates on the Araona situation. As the project concluded, HRSM Amazon partners left indigenous communities equipped with their own communication initiatives, such as communicator networks and informational podcasts that community members are now continuing to lead independently, setting them up for greater long-term connectivity and information access. Not only will communities be able to more effectively share information among themselves moving forward, but this greater visibility will also help the State understand primary needs among indigenous communities, create culturally relevant health information campaigns, and act with increased respect for indigenous autonomy." (Executive summary)
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"This report analyses how governments are building climate and carbon factors into their broadband policies, looks at the consequences of inaction, and suggests policy recommendations towards a greener internet. We compiled publicly available documents for the national broadband plans from the 100 l
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ow- and middle-income countries where A4AI has measured internet affordability for the past three years. From these countries, we conducted a keyword search for their mentions of the environment, climate, energy, electricity, and sustainability. From these results, we contextually analysed each mention and compared keyword mentions and density across plans and conducted additional textual analysis. We found that environmental themes are infrequently mentioned and exist mostly within the margins of broadband policy, if at all. An environmental keyword appeared once every 6-7 pages, on average. Genuine targets and policy reforms were even less frequent. These issues are described as limiting factors (reasons why social and economic situations are not better today) or as future possibilities (positive assumptions about what could happen from greater internet access and ICT use). Frequently, these same words - the regulatory environment, sustainable business models, and the investment climates - were used beyond their original meaning to frame policy debates around systems thinking, and did not relate to climate factors at all. Energy was one of the most common environmental themes across national broadband plans. The countries that had most environmental references in their policies, such as Nepal and Peru, tied their ambitions for greater access to the internet with greater access to electricity. This matches with countries' development paths where internet access and electrification are concurrent efforts." (Executive summary, page 3)
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