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Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Josepha Wessels

CyberOrient, volume 13, issue 1 (2019), pp. 4-27

"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 ... more

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#identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation

Abigail de Kosnik, Keith P. Feldman (eds.)

University of Michigan Press (2019), ix, 365 pp.

"#identity is among the first scholarly books to address the positive and negative effects of Twitter on our contemporary world. Hailing from diverse scholarly fields, all contributors are affiliated with The Color of New Media, a scholarly collective based at the University of California, Berkeley. ... more

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Social Media Activism: Water as a Common Good

Matteo Cernison

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (2019), 241 pp.

"This book focuses on the referendums against water privatisation in Italy and explores how activists took to social media, ultimately convincing twenty-seven million citizens to vote. Investigating the relationship between social movements and internet-related activism during complex campaigns, thi ... more

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Consumer Activism 2.0: Tools for Social Change

Pia A. Albinsson, B. Yasanthi Perera

In: The Routledge Companion to Digital Consumption

Russell W. Belk, Rosa Llamas (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2019), pp. 356-366

"To conclude, current Internet-based innovations, including Web 2.0 tools and the wherewithal to use these tools, have given consumers a new form of freedom, and voice. As such, they are more apt to start campaigns, expose social injustices, and demand change from the institutions concerned. We cont ... more

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Communication in Citizen Science: A Practical Guide to Communication and Engagement in Citizen Science

C. Veeckman, S. Talboom, L. Gijsel, H. Devoghel, A. Duerinckx

Leuven: Scivil (2019), 58 pp.

"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 ... more

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Social Media in Africa: An Emerging Force for Autocrats and Activists

Geoffrey York

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 415-430

"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med ... ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423) more

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Communication for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital

Pradip Thomas

Los Angeles et al.: Sage (2019), viii, 216 pp.

"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 ... more

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Media Activism

Anastasia Denisova, Michaela O'Brien (eds.)

Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, volume 14, issue 1 (2019), pp. 1-98

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The Other Digital China: Nonconfrontational Activism on the Social Web

Jing Wang

Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard University Press (2019), 312 pp.

"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)

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Digital Activism and Indignation Nets in Brazil: The Pressure Groups

Davi Barbosa Cavalcanti, Elder Paes Barreto Bringel, Fábio Regueira Jardelino da Costa, Tassiana Moura de Oliveira, Vinicius Rodrigues Zuccolotto

Journal of Politics in Latin America (JPLA), volume 11, issue 1 (2019), pp. 109-130

"This text, of exploratory stamp, debates the digital activism in contemporary Brazil. Methodologically, we will make a discussion on cyberactivism, digital media, and national pressure groups starting from two examples, Movimento Brasil Livre (The Free Brazil Movement) and Vem pra Rua (Come to The ... more

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Digitalisierung braucht Zivilgesellschaft

Wiebke Rasmussen

Robert Bosch Stiftung (2019), 176 pp.

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Madeleine Pastinelli, Francine Saillant, Mouloud Boukala, Célia Forget

Paris: UNESCO (2019), 87 pp.

"L’étude suggère que les médias sociaux ne sont pas toujours la panacée pour l’engagement citoyen des jeunes. Internet n’est pas un monde isolé en soi dans le sens où il ne fait que prolonger les usages éprouvés dans la vie citoyenne. Son rôle dans l’essor des Révolutions arabes a ... more

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Donor Assistance in the Transparency and Accountability Movement

Davin O'Regan

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2019), 36 pp.

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The Media and Participatory Governance in Ghana: Trends and Challenges

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) (2019), 15 pp.

"Drawing on available data and literature, this paper begins with an introduction on the media landscape in Ghana and explains how the media have contributed to promoting participatory and accountable governance. It further discusses the trends, barriers of media and governance in Ghana and makes ke ... more

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Media-CSO Collaboration: Old Allies, New Challenges

Dhaka: Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) (2019), 71 pp.

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Listening at the Local Level: The Role of Radio in Building Community and Trust

Jocelyn Ellen Nettlefold

Media International Australia, volume 172, issue 1 (2019), pp. 74-88

"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 ... more

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#meinung #macht #digital #plattformkapitalismus

ila, issue 426 (2019), pp. 4-40

"WhatsApp und Facebook werden auch in Lateinamerika massiv genutzt, vor allem aufgrund ihres vermeintlich kostenlosen Charakters. Auch dort wird das Problem der rechten Meinungsmache und der Fake News diskutiert, denn die Tatsache, dass sich die Leute heute vor allem über Werbeplattformen informier ... en, die unzutreffend „soziale Medien“ genannt werden, hat handfeste politische Auswirkungen. In Brasilien und El Salvador wurden die jüngsten Wahlen nicht über Präsenz und Debatten in den traditionellen Medien gewonnen, sondern über gut vorbereitete und teure WhatsApp-Kampagnen. In Brasilien siegt so der Rechtsextremist Jair Bolsonaro, in El Salvador der politische Wende-hals und PR-Profi Nayib Bukele. Die brasilianischen WhatsApp-Nutzer*innen wurden während des Wahlkampfs mit gefälschtem, häufig explizit sexuellem Inhalt geflutet, wie etwa der Meldung, dass die Arbeiterpartei plane, Babyfläschchen mit Nuckel in Penisform zu verteilen, um die Homosexualisierung der Kleinkinder voranzutreiben. Haarsträubendes postfaktisches Zeitalter – warum fallen Fake News auf fruchtbaren Boden? Klar ist: Klassische Medien haben ihre Funktion als „Gatekeeper“, als Instanzen, die sortieren und filtern, längst eingebüßt. Die Gesellschaften werden vielfältiger und unübersichtlicher: mehr Pluralität auf der einen Seite, andererseits immer tiefere Gräben, die sich durch die Gesellschaften ziehen. Die mediale Öffentlichkeit und die Zugangsbedingungen zu ihr wandeln sich. Die Menschen misstrauen „denen da oben“ durchaus zu Recht. Aber die kommerziellen Global Tech Player beherrschen die Räume für Kommunikation, Information und Meinungsbildung mit Algorithmen. Das hat Folgen. Das Geschäftsmodell basiert auf Datenschürfen, kombiniert mit persönlich zugeschnittener Werbung. Du bekommst das, was du sehen und hören willst, nicht was wahr ist und den Tatsachen entspricht. Und davon profitieren vor allem rechtspopulistische Akteure. Gibt es dazu einen funktionierenden linken Gegenentwurf? Wir, die Macher*innen der ila und ähnlich Gesinnte, wollten eigentlich schon immer zur Bildung einer Gegenöffentlichkeit beitragen, positionierten uns gegen den „bürgerlichen Journalismus als Stellvertreterjournalismus“, wollten „Betroffenenberichterstattung“. Heute haben Rechte und Rechtsextreme den Begriff „Gegenöffentlichkeit“ für sich gekapert. Und jetzt haben wir den Salat. Aktuell existiert eine Öffentlichkeit jenseits der Dichotomie „staatlich geregelt oder privat“. Wir haben kein Problem mehr damit, unsere eigenen Inhalte zu verbreiten und eigene Medien zu schaffen. Das stellt allerdings noch längst nicht sicher, dass wir auch gehört werden. Der springende Punkt ist nicht mehr der Zugang, sondern die Reichweite. Wir konkurrieren mit allen anderen Anbietern von welcher Information auch immer um Aufmerksamkeit. Und dabei verfügen wir, kaum anders als früher, immer noch über die schwächeren Möglichkeiten. Wie sieht also das Überleben im „Plattformkapitalismus“ aus, wie sich darin bewegen, schützen, informieren, seine Meinung bilden und als politisch Aktive oder alternative Medienschaffende die eigenen Inhalte verbreiten? Dazu ein paar Ideen, die sich aus der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema und lateinamerikanischen Gesprächspartner*innen herauskristallisieren: Versteht, die Technik zu verstehen (in Lateinamerika ist die Rede von hackear la tecnología, also die Technologie für die eigenen Zwecke zu nutzen wissen), wahrt eine kritische Distanz, haltet eure Informationsquellen vielfältig (was vor allem auch Kindern und Jugendlichen vermittelt werden sollte), schafft und nutzt alternative Plattformen. Manchmal kann auch digitales Fasten das Gebot der Stunde sein. Handy aus und raus auf die Straße – oder in den Wald." (Editorial) more

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Innovative Arab Media and the New Outlines of Citizenship: A Collaborative Vision Builds Stronger Journalism Across the Region

Lina Attalah

New York: Century Foundation (2019), 15 pp.

"In this report, I have provided a glimpse of the ways in which innovative media outlets act as political agents in their current contexts, through their expressed positions, their content, and the forms in which they publish. Further work is needed to more fully describe the editorial sensibilities ... more

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Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
Deep Insights

Maggie Dwyer, Thomas Molony (eds.)

London: Zed Books (2019), xiii, 299 pp.

"Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstra ... more

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Documenting Syria: Film-Making, Video Activism and Revolution

Josepha Ivanka Wessels

London et al.: Tauris (2019), xiv, 321 pp.

"Since the 1970s, Syrian cinema masters played a defining role in avant-garde filmmaking and political dissent against authoritarianism. After the outbreak of violence in 2011, an estimated 500,000 video clips were uploaded making it one of the first YouTubed revolutions in history. This book is the ... more

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Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
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