"Mainstream media coverage of war often distorts or ignores women’s perspectives and experiences in armed conflict, and also their efforts to build peace. This article focuses on the work of FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavour/Radio Internacional Feminista), a women’s international Inte
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rnet radio initiative produced by Latin American and Caribbean women in Costa Rica, which ‘uses technologies, voices, and actions’ to amplify the voices of women worldwide as they recount their experiences and perspectives of armed conflict. In doing so, FIRE helps promote an alternative vision of human existence that is based on social justice and human rights, and which serves to strengthen women’s and other social and political movements that are based on these values." (Abstract)
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"Editors and journalists who have been trained to understand issues of gender-based violence and human rights can have a positive influence on educating public and political understanding of these issues. This article describes two workshops held recently in Senegal and Albania for male and female e
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ditors and journalists. The UNFPA workshop for journalists and editors from six African countries in postconflict situations, held in Senegal, was deliberately scheduled to coincide with the Dakar film festival on gender-based violence. The purpose of the UNFPA strategy was to achieve extensive media coverage in these six countries. The Albanian workshop for local and national media took place in Tirana as part of a three-year project against sex-trafficking, conducted by the NGO Albanian Centre for Population and Development in partnership with the Mediterranean Women’s Studies Centre." (Abstract)
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"Struggles over the meaning of the past are common in postcolonial states. State cultural heritage programs build monuments to reinforce in nation building efforts—often supported by international organizations and tourist dollars. These efforts often ignore the other, often more troubling memorie
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s preserved by local communities—markers of colonial oppression, cultural genocide, and ethnic identity. Yet, as the contributors to this volume note, questions of memory, heritage, identity and conservation are interwoven at the local, ethnic, national and global level and cannot be easily disentangled. In a fascinating series of cases from West Africa, anthropologists, archaeologists and art historians show how memory and heritage play out in a variety of postcolonial contexts. Settings range from televised ritual performances in Mali to monument conservation in Djenne and slavery memorials in Ghana." (Publisher description)
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"In 2002, 14 indigenous radio stations began operating in Colombia reaching 78.6 percent of the national indigenous population. Colombian indigenous radio stations are shaped by intense deliberations among each indigenous people about the poetics of information and communication technologies, unders
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tood as the exploration of the specific sets of social, cultural and political relations in which each radio station would exist if brought into each indigenous territory. Colombian indigenous peoples' appropriation of information and communication technologies is framed by new legislative frameworks made possible by the Colombian constitutional reform of 1991, by indigenous peoples' critique of Colombian mainstream media and, more significantly, by discussions among indigenous peoples about the adoption of radio — what we call a poetics of radio." (Abstract)
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"This report presents the results of the first national qualitative research study into Australian community broadcasting audiences. It explores why a significant and increasing number of Australians listen to community radio and/or watch community television, what they value about it, and how it me
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ets their needs. Community broadcasting in Australia began in the early 1970s with the establishment of the first metropolitan community radio stations. Community television is a comparatively recent development dating from the early 1990s. Today, Australian community radio is a mature industry catering to a wide variety of interests. Our study deals with audiences for ‘generalist’ stations in metropolitan and regional Australia and explores responses from two major interest groups — Indigenous and ethnic communities. Audiences for the nascent community television industry provide a further focus." (Executive summary, page 1)
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"I have been privileged to compile this anthology of essays, stories and testimonies of Africa’s top media executives who, through their actions and visionary leadership, are re-shaping and strengthening Africa’s fledgling media companies and institutions. Their touching real-life stories are an
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inspiration to all who work and desire to see Africa succeed and to have its voice heard above the din of the new digital age. A financially robust African media that is also independent and pluralistic will serve to give meaning to and strengthen the continent’s nascent democracy and contribute to the lifting of its people out of grinding under-development, poverty and related ills. These media leaders, in sharing their stories with the rest of Africa and the world, show that the real test of what works and does not work in managing and leading a successful media firm too often lies in the field and at times does not necessarily follow orthodoxy." (Editor's note)
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"The Gender and Media Baseline Study, conducted in southern Africa in 2003, revealed glaring gender disparities in the media and in its editorial content. With its goal to ‘promote gender equality in and through the media’, Gender Links (GL) has worked with a broad range of partners to try to re
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dress these gaps through research, advocacy, and training, targeting media producers, those who influence news content, and consumers. GL, and the Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) network that it hosts, are also developing a Gender and Media Diversity Centre, to enhance the sharing of knowledge in this important but relatively new area of work." (Abstract)
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