"This article examines the role of local radio in the contemporary media environment, specifically as a site for community engagement. Previous research finds journalistic organisations, at the local level, are critical to the functioning of society and more needs to be understood about their contem
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porary role amid destabilised and fragmented public discourse. In contrast to unrestrained and untrustworthy social media platforms, the mediation of local radio can assist in encouraging more inclusive, constructive, and respectful views from people from diverse sectors of society. Empirical research from a case study of a locally produced ABC Radio Community Conversation event exploring community tensions about built, heritage and environmental development in the Australian island state of Tasmania provides new insights into how the facilitation of local radio discussion can help build trust, public knowledge and enable greater participation. Listening and transparency from journalists about their practices is important, creating a space where people can connect in a civil and empathetic way not easily afforded by social media." (Abstract)
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"As an introduction to this special issue of CyberOrient, this text provides an insight into ongoing research in studies of digital layers of revolutions, digital communication, and dissidence in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Providing a short overview of the latest development
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s of uprisings and street demonstrations in the region, the text reflects on similarities and differences between the various revolts currently taking place. Digital dissidence is part and parcel of these revolts. Zooming in on the Syrian case, this article assesses how the Syrian revolution and its digital components developed into the humanitarian crisis it has become after nine years of violence. The article then shortly reflects on the Sudanese revolution of 2019, which is seemingly the most successful uprising in the Arab world thanks to a strong digital component, as noted in the words of its own revolutionaries. This text then introduces two contributions to this special issue focused on, respectively, Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories. The contest between what Layla Shereen Sakr calls “techies on the ground” and repressive regimes is compared to that of a race between a hare and a turtle, in which the techies continuously circumvent the attempts by the repressive regimes to curtail their means of digital communication and capacity for organizing collective action." (Abstract)
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"Communication for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital is a critical introduction to communication for social change (CSC) theory. The book presents refreshingly new perspectives and specifically makes the case for CSC theory to factor in context, leanings from social movements
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and a critique of the digital technology. This book offers perspectives on the historical continuities within this field of study along with the departures that have been hastened and shaped by confluences between ideas and practice as well as by digital technology and social movements." (Publisher description)
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"Citizen science is a vast field. It covers the spectrum of research approaches and offers different methods for engaging volunteers with research in a variety of ways. Common to every citizen science project is a need to communicate with the public effectively. This to recruit and retain citizen sc
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ientists, but equally to inform, train and thank them, in the proper manner, when the project ends. It was this need which prompted Scivil, the Flemish Knowledge Centre for Citizen Science, to set up the working group on communication and participation. The working group decided to document its communication expertise in this guide for anyone who plans to initiate a citizen science project [...] In this guide we provide the building blocks to write up a communication plan for your project, and we include exercises on how to identify a target audience and reach out to schools. We also offer a set of tactics and tools, to secure the initial and continued participation of your citizen scientists. Finally, with our practical tips, you can begin the job of defining your communication plan and choosing the right tactics for effective communication in citizen science. This guide is for anyone who finds themselves communicating and engaging with citizen scientists. The content of the guide is based on studies of citizen participation and the real-life experience of science communicators." (Preface, page 4)
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"Even at the most audience-informed organizations, journalists recognize the immense difficulty in making sense of what audience members and relevant experts know, particularly without presently available tools and ample staff. This work is hard, yet there is an increasing amount of interest in it.
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We hear more reporters, editors, and audience development staff around the world asking: how can this work be operationalized? With this report you see what we have learned so far about memberful routines. We close by highlighting some of the limits and cautions of working closely with members. We do this not to dissuade you from pursuing these routines, but to help as you undertake your own projects with members, donors, subscribers, and contributors: not every story can have, and not every story should have, reader involvement; make it crystal clear to community members: Everyone has opinions. Your opinions will not run our newsroom; member engagement is hard work. Staff need to be identified, trained, and given time to do it right; be ready to handle the incoming traffic if your callouts and other outreach succeed and you have plenty of takers. Design for potential over-supply of information!; project management is a discipline unto itself. Without it, news sites will find it hard to succeed at establishing memberful routines; members in their natural state do not necessarily know what news organizations need from them. We have to teach them that part." (Conclusion, page 53)
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"A scholar and activist tells the story of change makers operating within the Chinese Communist system, whose ideas of social action necessarily differ from those dominant in Western, liberal societies." (Publisher description)
"My focus in this chapter is on civil society mobilization in Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar, and particularly in Kanbauk, a village of about 1,500 households in the Tanintharyi Hills, eighty kilometres north of the regional capital, Dawei. In recent years, Kanbauk villagers have contended w
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ith Delco Ltd, a Yangon-based company that runs a tin and tungsten mine in their area in a production-sharing agreement with the government-owned Mining Enterprise No. 2. Villagers have been seeking to assert some influence over company practices, especially regarding the release of wastewater into local streams. Tensions intensified after an accident in September 2015 in which a tailing pond embankment collapsed causing a flash flood that led to the death of a child and the destruction of many villagers' houses. I discuss the resistance effort that emerged in the village and the company's strategies to suppress and dismiss it. Specifically, I focus on the work of a Kanbauk writer and activist, Aung Lwin, and an evocative essay he wrote, published in May 2016 in Tanintharyi Weekly, a small regional publication. Written from the perspective of a fish dying in a stream polluted by mining waste, Aung Lwin's essay offers a sardonic view of events in the village and hints at a possible arrangement between the company and local government officials. As part of its larger effort to quash local resistance to the mine, Delco filed (and won) a lawsuit against Aung Lwin for criminal defamation under Article 500 of the Myanmar Penal Code. The case reveals the complexities of the current moment in Myanmar and the uncertain spaces in which actors in civil society are operating. It reveals as well the fraught dynamics of media, as authoritarian forces remain active and unpredictable. Although this particular lawsuit was brought against the writer rather than the publication, it has wider implications for Myanmar media, especially for smaller, more vulnerable, regional outlets." (Page 152)
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"This book offers fresh insights on digital activism and cyberconflicts through a comparison of sociopolitical and ethnoreligious movements in Nigeria. Occupy Nigeria, Boko Haram and The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) highlight the digital and organizational aspects of confl
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ict mobilization in contemporary Nigeria." (Publisher description)
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"Many factors seem to be coming together in Kenya that can pave the way towards a free, dynamic internet as a space for social and democratic freedoms. On the other hand, the newly re-elected government already exhibited authoritarian tendencies in the last legislative period and indicated – immed
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iately after the (subsequently annulled) elections in August with its crackdown on several NGOs and on several television stations in January 2018 – that these tendencies can be expected to intensify further [...] It therefore remains unclear who will prevail in the medium term. Will the old generation hang on to the resources while the young people occasionally engage in short pinprick campaigns? Or will the internet activists and young politicians succeed in changing the social and political awareness of the younger generation, achieving better political participation opportunities in the long term and thus a chance to gain fairer access to state resources and high-quality government services?" (Conclusions)
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"This chapter employs the cyberconflict perspective (Karatzogianni 2006, 2009, 2010, 2012a: 52-73, 2012b: 221-46; Karatzogianni and Robinson 2010) to offer an in-depth analysis of Chinese dissidents in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) focusing particularly on the 2000s. A distinction is drawn
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between socio-political (or active) social movement uses of the internet – which focus on organisation, mobilisation and the networked form of the medium itself – and ethno-religious (or reactive) social movement uses, which subordinate the medium to vertical logics. These are often expressed in terms of ad hoc mobilisations and tit-for-tat defacements and cyberattacks adhering to closed and fixed identities, such as nationality, religion and ethnicity." (Page 217)
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"Während viele Bürgerinnen und Bürger sowie Beobachter große Hoffnungen hegen, die sozialen Medien könnten ein wirksames Instrument sein, um soziale Bewegungen zu Themen wie Ungleichheit, Ungerechtigkeit und Umwelt in Gang zu setzen, ist es zuweilen schwierig, die massenhaften Reaktionen in den
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sozialen Medien in konkretes gemeinsames Handeln auf physischer Ebene umzusetzen. Beispiele wie das der »6700 Menschen für 6700 Bäume« in Hanoi bleiben die Ausnahme. Gesellschaftliches Engagement lässt sich nicht mit der Kraft von »Social Media Power« gleichsetzen, da es nur dann größere Dynamik entfaltet, wenn es nicht direkt politische Autorität, die Interessen mächtiger Institutionen, Parteiführer oder einflussreiche Einzelpersonen und deren persönliche Interessen herausfordert, sei es lokal oder auf Landesebene. Dass dies nach wie vor so ist, liegt vor allem daran, dass soziale Medien leicht marginalisiert und wirkungsvoll unterdrückt werden können." (Seite 232)
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"This review looks back over 11 years of civil society advocacy in the information society – a total of 510 country reports published in Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) from 2007 to 2017. It covers a period of important global shifts, from the exponential growth and influence of social
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media, to the turbulence and hope of the Arab Spring, to revelations of widespread state surveillance. It offers a summary of what internet rights activists wrote about, what they found important, the challenges they faced, and what they felt needed to be done to strengthen a people-centred information society." (Back cover)
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"Ciudadanía digital y democracia participativa trata de describir experiencias concretas y procesos de apropiación y rebelión frente al actual statu quo tecnocrático a través de dos ejes conceptuales claramente definidos:--Propuestas teóricas y analíticas para el estudio de la Ciudadanía Dig
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ital manifestada a través de prácticas de Democracia Participativa.--Estudios de caso que abarcan desde la apropiación y transformación de las tecnologías digitales por parte de comunidades indígenes; pasando por las prácticas de ingeniería social comunicativa como Comunitlán (Puebla, México); hasta los usos tecnopolíticos que entran en juego en la arena de la disputa política a lo largo de la región, desde Bolivia a México o Venezuela." (Cubierta del libro)
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"This Is Not an Atlas gathers more than 40 counter-cartographies from all over the world. This collection shows how maps are created and transformed as a part of political struggle, for critical research or in art and education: from indigenous territories in the Amazon to the anti-eviction movement
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in San Francisco; from defending commons in Mexico to mapping refugee camps with balloons in Lebanon; from slums in Nairobi to squats in Berlin; from supporting communities in the Philippines to reporting sexual harassment in Cairo. This Is Not an Atlas seeks to inspire, to document the underrepresented, and to be a useful companion when becoming a counter-cartographer yourself." (Publisher description)
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