"This study examines the obstacles and challenges faced by female journalists in Kuwait. It explores a set of interrelated factors that discourage women from working in the media, such as gender inequality, sexual harassment, threats, social resistance, and cultural barriers. The study uses a mixed
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methods approach, comprising a survey of 24 Kuwaiti female journalists and qualitative in-depth interviews with 8 female journalists. Findings suggest that the cultural resistance that women have faced for years around the world does not affect female journalists in Kuwait so much; however, they still face sexism, exclusion, and stereotyping in the newsroom. Moreover, more than one-third of female journalists have faced sexual harassment at work, while 75% faced abuse of power and 54.2% reported being publicly humiliated or receiving threats of humiliation. Although all female journalists denied being physically abused, 45.8% reported facing verbal threats and 37.5% faced verbal violence." (Abstract)
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"Journalists in Pakistan are losing their lives during the course of their duty. This study identifies the factors and actors behind the killings of Pakistani journalists and the role of stakeholders and media owners in compromising journalists’ safety, under the lens of social responsibility theo
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ry, by unearthing the case study of slain journalist Arshad Sharif. This study looks into the complete picture of Pakistani journalists’ killings. In order to collect data, in-depth interviews of 15 seasoned journalists are conducted through snowball sampling and 10 recent tweets of Arshad Shairf has been examined by applying the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to uncover the rhetoric. The findings show that the journalists in Pakistan are performing their jobs in grave situation and get exposed to life threats when they blur the line between journalism and politics. State and non-state actors, land mafias and criminal gangs threaten journalists. Stakeholders and media owners use media workers for their interests. The case of Arshad Sharif’s murder has raised questions on the safety of journalists and the journalistic ethics in Pakistan. It is recommended to revisit the freedom of expression and media code of ethics in the light of findings of this research." (Abstract)
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"Based on a 5-year study, involving over 150 in-depth interviews, this book examines the political, economic and social forces that sustain and influence humanitarian journalists. The authors argue that – by amplifying marginalised voices and providing critical, in-depth explanations of neglected
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crises – these journalists show us that another kind of humanitarian journalism is possible. However, the authors also reveal the heavy price these reporters pay for deviating from conventional journalistic norms. Their peripheral position at the ‘boundary zone’ between the journalistic and humanitarian fields means that a humanitarian journalist’s job is often precarious – with direct implications for their work, especially as ‘watchdogs’ for the aid sector. As a result, they urgently need more support if they are to continue to do this work and promote more effective and accountable humanitarian action." (Publisher description)
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"The chapter examines how news coverage of feminist protests in Mexico, one of the most violent countries in the world for women and for journalists, has changed in mainstream Mexican media since the #MeToo movement’s revitalization after 2017. With few exceptions, news coverage in Mexico, a count
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ry in the Global South, has historically emphasized disruptive behavior and the use of violence rather than the grievances of protesters. This trend follows the protest paradigm, which contends that media coverage tends to disparage protesters and hinder their role as political actors. However, the trend in coverage has begun to shift over the past several years, yet minimal scholarly discussions have occurred about temporal and geographical variations in news coverage of feminist mobilizations in Mexico. Given the recent increase in feminist demonstrations and upsurge in violence against women, this chapter provides findings from qualitative content analyses of 1007 news articles from 25 Mexican news media and agencies and assesses how they reported on the annual International Women’s Day marches on March 8 for the 2018–2020 time frame. These analyses concentrate on four dimensions of news coverage that focus on women’s protests: the evolution of topics in the news narrative; the tone of the coverage focusing on demonstrations; source selection; and news frames. The chapter demonstrates that journalists in Mexico have begun to shift away from the typical protest paradigm when covering demonstrations, and that they have moved toward a more assertive framing of women’s demands." (Abstract)
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"Venezuela leads Latin America with the largest number of imprisoned journalists and extreme government-led media censorship. Our in-depth interviews with 25 Venezuelan journalists reveal that assisting journalists to combat government control are social media and technology platforms like WhatsApp,
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Facebook and Twitter, which, in Venezuela, have moved beyond their ability to share and mobilise, and have become tactical media, the media of crisis criticism and opposition." (Abstract)
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"Targeted attacks on journalists are internationally condemned crimes, which not only undermine freedom of expression, but also symbolize an utter disregard for basic human rights. Yet, murders of journalists occur in all types of regimes, whether autocratic or democratic. This article explores the
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conditions that enable journalists to be subject to deadly attacks by state officials and unknown perpetrators. The typology of monitoring coercive agents is useful for the distinction between private and public information. External monitors, which share the information they gather with the public and hold the coercive agents accountable, are crucial for a safe working environment for journalists. The results of the multivariate regressions demonstrate that three main indicators of external monitoring, (1) robustness of civil society, (2) independence of media, and (3) strength of the judiciary are all associated with the occurrence of murders of journalists in a country. While a robust civil society and a strong judiciary decreases the probability of journalists being murdered by state officials and unknown perpetrators, a more critical and independent media structure appears to be associated with a higher probability of murders of journalists. The risks of such murders are especially higher for scenarios where the critical media outlets are abundant, but civil society and the judiciary are particularly weak and ineffective." (Abstract)
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"This research is based on 28 in-depth interviews with Kenya-based journalists who report terrorism. The objective of the research was to recount their lived experiences. The theme of safety of journalists comprised psychological and physical safety of the newspeople, and there were various ways in
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which the psychological and individual safety of the journalists covering terrorism and related events was at risk. The psychological safety included traumatic events leading to sleeplessness and nightmares, loss of memory, and some journalists resorting to alcohol abuse in a bid to cope with the traumatic experiences. These physical safety concerns for some journalists included threats of death by fanatical religious groups, while other participants said that they were threatened with death because of their coverage of terrorism and related activities in Kenya." (Abstract)
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"Journalists act strategically in response to their political environments, using practices like self-censorship to avoid negative repercussions from powerful actors. But what does self-censorship look like in practice? Grounded in theories of policy response and media sociology, this study uses jou
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rnalistic narratives to examine three strategies journalists employ to publish news while safeguarding themselves in semi-authoritarian contexts with restricted media freedom. Journalists choose among these based on several factors, including the relative power available to them in a particular organizational context, story idea, or angle. The analysis shows that self-censorship is more negotiated and less one-directional than the current literature suggests. The negotiation lens also shows how power dynamics can change on a situational basis, even in contexts where one actor clearly has significantly more power than the other." (Abstract)
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"This study was conducted to assess the risks journalists face while reporting in Somalia. It was guided by three specific objectives that included: evaluating the cases of physical attacks on journalists reporting in Somalia, analyzing the cases of arbitrary arrests and imprisonments of journalists
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recorded in Somalia and investigating the cases of journalists being killed in Somalia in three years between 2019 and 2021. The study was qualitative and used secondary data to explore the objectives. It analyzed data from five reports which had information collected between 2019- 2021 that included: The Somali Mechanism for Safety of Journalists (SMSJ) report 2021, The UNESCO observatory report on journalists killed 2021, The National Union of Somalia Journalists (NUSOJ) report of 2021, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report of 2020/2021, and The Amnesty International Research report of 2020. Data was classified into three thematic areas according to the study objectives. The data was then uploaded into the coding sheet and analyzed. The study found out that, Media freedoms in Somalia is being suppressed by the Federal state and non-state actors. Evidence from the reports showed that, between 2019 and 2021, eight journalists have been killed, 66 journalists have been arbitrary arrested and 81 journalists have been physically attacked and assaulted. Additionally, The Somali federal and state governments targeted and raided media outlets considered disloyal to the regime and approximately 14 media outlets were struck by government officials and armed soldiers. The study recommends that, according to UN plan of Action on the safety of Journalists and the issue of impunity (2012), the Somali government needs to demonstrate its assurance to the protection and safety of journalists and media freedom by taking significant action to tackle the extensive impunity for crimes against the media, otherwise, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ACHPR having signed a memorandum of understanding with UNESCO to safeguard journalists should step in and manage the risks that journalists working in Somalia face daily." (Abstract)
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"Our 2022 report shows that all of the most under-reported crises are now in Africa. Hunger is rampant and spreading, particularly in East Africa where one of the worst droughts in living memory is causing over 21 million people to face life-threatening hunger. Water becomes scarcer every day, crops
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are failing, livestock are dying. Women and girls are disproportionately affected, with 150 million more women than men going hungry in 2021 around the world. Yet media attention on countries such as Malawi, Zambia and Chad fall into the shadows of the news headlines. This year, there have been more than fifty times the number of media articles written about the new iPhone 14 (95,118) than the millions of people in need of life-saving humanitarian aid right now due to extreme drought in Angola (1,847) – the crisis which received the least media attention in 2022." (Introduction, page 3)
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"Can residents of Ukraine discern between pro-Kremlin disinformation and true statements? Moreover, which pro-Kremlin disinformation claims are more likely to be believed, and by which audiences? We present the results from two surveys carried out in 2019—one online and the other face-to-face—th
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at address these questions in Ukraine, where the Russian government and its supporters have heavily targeted disinformation campaigns. We find that, on average, respondents can distinguish between true stories and disinformation. However, many Ukrainians remain uncertain about a variety of disinformation claims’ truthfulness. We show that the topic of the disinformation claim matters. Disinformation about the economy is more likely to be believed than disinformation about politics, historical experience, or the military. Additionally, Ukrainians with partisan and ethnolinguistic ties to Russia are more likely to believe pro-Kremlin disinformation across topics. Our findings underscore the importance of evaluating multiple types of disinformation claims present in a country and examining these claims’ target audiences." (Abstract)
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"This article analyses how international advocacy campaigns approach and define media freedom, and what influences this process. It does this through a two-year case study of the Media Freedom Coalition—an intergovernmental partnership of over 50 countries—that included 55 interviews with key st
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akeholders, observations, and document analysis. This revelatory case sheds light on how norms of media freedom are constructed and contested on the international stage, and their implications for journalists, media freedom and geo-politics. We show that the Coalition adopted a state-centric, accountability-focused, and negative understanding of media freedom. This discourse legitimized a narrow, reactive, and “resource-light” approach to supporting media freedom, focused on “other” countries. We argue that critical norm research provides a helpful prism for understanding this Coalition’s operations, and the global politics of media freedom more generally. These findings have important implications for understandings of “norm entrepreneurship,” “media imperialism,” and “media freedom” itself." (Abstract)
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"In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect free
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dom of expression. for centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. the new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-total immunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. in the book, particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. the state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all." (Publisher description)
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"The existing literature presents several studies which show that the levels of press freedom can affect the state of the economy. What has not thus far been investigated is whether the economy can affect the levels of press freedom, the specific economic conditions that mainly affect it and the dif
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ferences among various countries. This study attempts to analyze the impact of economic conditions on the degree of press freedom, in 18 countries of the western world based on a quantitative analysis for the period 2002–2019, and advance our understanding of this relationship. We find that the state of the economy within a country can affect the level of press freedom while the effects of economic conditions on the degree of press freedom seem to vary among different media systems of the western world." (Abstract)
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"Science journalism faces an issue that is part of a bigger picture of media change. The economic pressures which have seen shrinking resources available for reporting news are contrasted by the relentless rise of corporate communication and public relations. Institutional science communication has
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become a booming industry, operating, at least partially, by bypassing the traditional roles of journalists. To interrogate how science journalists perceive the impact of these changes on their professional roles, as well as how they navigate relationships with scientists and institutional science communicators, we conducted in-depth interviews with experienced South African science journalists. Our paper summarises the results of this study, including how journalists perceive changes in their professional identities and responsibilities. We analyse the interview data and explore the extent to which science journalists perceive themselves as “cheerleaders” for science, in contrast to critical investigators tasked with holding science and scientists to account, as well as how they operate in a world of well-endowed corporate science communication. We situate these interview findings against the theoretical background of boundary work and recent discussions about the blurring boundaries between science journalism and science communication." (Abstract)
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"This article aims to discuss what we call environmental opacity, a condition of mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) that operates on the basis of end-to-end encryption systems. Utilizing WhatsApp as a specific example, the article presents two fundamental dilemmas around which some issues conc
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erning transparency are mobilized when it comes to digital private communication. The first of them relates to how end-to-end encryption has simultaneously become an asset and a problem for democratic environments; on the one hand, protecting users’ privacy, and on the other, allowing for the circulation of misinformation and harmful content. The second dilemma deals with how this environment of opacity impacts the ethics and transparency of scholarly research focused on WhatsApp and other MIMSs. The paper also reviews an extensive body of studies that discuss the political uses of WhatsApp in different dimensions, and argues that emerging countries with large user bases, such as Brazil and India, have experienced a series of negative effects after the adoption of WhatsApp by politically oriented groups. Among the main proposals, the article suggests some measures to foster platform transparency and facilitate scientific research instead of hindering it." (Abstract)
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"Since the beginning of 2020, media around the world have started and intensified their TikTok activity to gain notoriety and reach young people, their main user group. However, as with other previously popularized social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, the platform’s logic is different from t
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hat traditionally employed by the media system when developing information products. The objective of this paper is to analyze the degree of adaptation to the logic of this network for the activity developed on it by the Spanish media. For this purpose, a combined methodology of quantitative and content analysis was applied to 446 videos posted by the official user accounts of 20 Minutos, Antena 3 Noticias, El Diario, El Mundo, and El País –the five media outlets with the largest online audience in that period –from the time the accounts were created until January 31, 2022. Specifically, we studied the activity developed, the notoriety achieved, and the interaction obtained, as well as the most common formats, topics, protagonists, and brand identity elements. The results show that the main Spanish media have tried to adapt to the entertainment logic of the platform both with the use of native editing resources as well as through the creation of original materials, predominantly soft news, about entertainment, celebrities, and lifestyle. The videos that gain more notoriety are those that are more adapted to this logic. However, the Spanish media analyzed post less frequently than international media, obtain fewer views, and register lower engagement levels; in addition, they do not use their presence on this social network to promote their other editorial products." (Abstract)
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"What might feminist approaches to the protection of journalists look like, and what benefits might they bring? From national organisations to grassroots networks, our findings document women’s monumental efforts to make structural changes, tackle entrenched patterns of gender-based discrimination
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and violence, and enhance the safety of women journalists. The initiatives showcased in these case studies are a testament to the creativity and resilience of those working on the feminist frontlines. The case studies: In 2021, ARTICLE 19 set out to make these sometimes invisible practices more visible, building on our existing programmes on the safety of women journalists worldwide. We undertook original research globally and specifically in six countries – three in Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and three in Latin America (Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay)." (Abstract)
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"Der Begriff der "alternativen Fakten" hat in den vergangenen Jahren einen raschen Aufstieg erfahren. Mit ihm verbindet sich die Sorge, dass "alternative", den Tatsachen widersprechende Deutungen bestimmter politisch relevanter Sachverhalte zugenommen haben - und dass dies auf ein Schwinden des gete
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ilten Wissens in der Gesellschaft hinweise. Doch was sind eigentlich "alternative Fakten", und wie ist ihre Verbreitung zu verstehen? Wie der Soziologe Nils C. Kumkar darlegt, gehe es hierbei nicht lediglich um fehlgeleitete Annahmen über die Welt, die durch die "richtigen" Informationen korrigiert werden könnten. Für ein Verständnis des Phänomens relevant sei vielmehr die kommunikative Funktion, die es in Prozessen der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung einnehme. Empirisch arbeitet er anhand von drei Beispielen - der Debatte um die Zuschauerzahl bei der Amtseinführung Donald Trumps, der Verbreitung von Publikationen, die den menschengemachten Klimawandel anzweifeln, sowie der Debatte um die "Querdenker" und die Corona-Maßnahmen - heraus, dass die Nutzung "alternativer Fakten" stets in vorgängige gesellschaftliche Konflikte eingebettet ist. Innerhalb dieser Konflikte erfüllten sie weniger die Funktion, glaubhafte Deutungen zu vermitteln, als die, Verwirrung zu stiften. Der Autor plädiert dafür, diese hintergründigen Konflikte in den Blick zu nehmen, um das Phänomen "alternative Fakten" besser verstehen und ihre Verbreitung bekämpfen zu können." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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