"This article examines the changing ways in which intelligence about the BBC’s international audiences has been gathered and used since the advent of the Empire Service in 1932. It is written from the perspective of a former Head of Audience Research (1982-96) at the BBC World Service. In BBC dome
...
stic broadcasting, the appointment of Robert Silvey in 1936 led to the daily collection throughout the UK of the most comprehensive national audience data anywhere in the world. For international broadcasting such systematic detail and regularity was out of the question. The listeners were widely scattered and thinly spread. Survey research of any kind was difficult, expensive or impossible. Moreover, many parts of the world to which the BBC World Service (BBCWS) broadcast were closed to any systematic local research, either because no local facilities to do research existed or because of legal or governmental prohibitions. At the start of BBC Empire Service spontaneous feedback from listeners’ letters was the main source of information. Research was also carried out using questionnaires sent by international mail to listeners who had written to the BBC. Face to face surveys in target areas were conducted from 1944, but coverage was patchy and limited by lack of resources. During the 1970s and 1980s it was conclusively shown that letter writers are unrepresentative of the whole audience. The need to have more representative data about audiences led to a massive increase in funding for quantitative research, especially under John Tusa, the Managing Director of the World Service from 1986 to 1992. Tusa increased the amount available to spend on research more than twenty-fold. As well as quantitative research using surveys of adult populations in all parts of the world (only a tiny number of countries today remain closed to all research) qualitative work is now also regularly commissioned. The global success of the BBC World Service is a result of the fact that it developed better intelligence about audiences than all other international broadcasters." (Abstract)
more
"Much work has been done to map out the contours of Islamic intellectual production in West Africa before the twentieth century. However, we still do not understand very well the process by which ideas and texts circulated in the region. Lists of specific books imported by West Africans during the n
...
ineteenth century are rare (although one such compilation helps frame this paper), and the particular books memorized and/or copied by individual students on particular subjects usually fail to tells us much about their mentors’ libraries. As a result, the reconstruction of a trans-Saharan, much less the east-west Sahelian book trade, if these existed in any formal sense, must be subject to some speculation. Clearly, there was a steady demand in West Africa for Arabic texts; libraries and literary capital have long been understood as an important component of religious authority. But our knowledge of what might have been the actual texts sought in a book trade, is limited. We can deduce something about the distribution of books in West Africa from the authors and subjects studied in particular venues, and from analyses of the citations used in particular scholarly works written by West Africans. But both the works studied and the analysis of citations tell us about books that were known to individual scholars rather than works that were actually in demand. This paper seeks to describe the books—by author and title—that were in heaviest demand by doing an inventory of the contents of a cross-section of West African libraries." (Introduction)
more
"This is the first monograph on the history of film culture ever for lusophone Africa. It consists of three parts: the colonial period (1896-1974), the first years of independence (1975-1991) and the years of the liberalization of the media (1992-2010). In these three periods attention is given to t
...
he exhibition of films (and the African or local audience) and to the production of films in the country by Mozambicans or non-Mozambicans. The book takes an African perspective on film culture and the political evolutions in the country." (commbox)
more
"The rise of Juan Perón to power in Argentina in the 1940s is one of the most studied subjects in Argentine history. But no book before this has examined the role the Peronists' struggle with the major commercial newspaper media played in the movement's evolution, or what the resulting transformati
...
on of this industry meant for the normative and practical redefinition of the relationships among state, press, and public. In The Fourth Enemy, James Cane traces the violent confrontations, backroom deals, and legal actions that allowed Juan Domingo Perón to convert Latin America's most vibrant commercial newspaper industry into the region's largest state-dominated media empire. An interdisciplinary study drawing from labor history, communication studies, and the history of ideas, this book shows how decades-old conflicts within the newspaper industry helped shape not just the social crises from which Peronism emerged, but the very nature of the Peronist experiment as well." (Publisher description)
more
El presente libro está constituido por diecisiete ponencias y/o artículos que se presentaron en el coloquio "El cine que fue: 100 años de cine chileno".
"Este texto está dividido en seis capítulos que indagan, en el tiempo, los campos culturales de los diarios y revistas, los libros, los discos, las películas, la radio y la televisión. Es una obra colectiva que incluye investigaciones, estadísticas y cartografías generadas por el Sistema de In
...
formación Cultural de la Argentina (SInCA). Además, los escritos centrales que abordan cada industria cultural están acompañados de opiniones de 18 especialistas." (SInCA website)
more
"Este libro ambiciona explicar la naturaleza compleja de la comunicación iberoamericana, reconociendo que sus contornos geopolíticos y sus origenes etnoreligiosos constituyen variables fundamentales para entender el tejido multicultural de su identidad mestiza. Tomamos como referencia el método c
...
omparativo, estratégia investigativa apropriadamente elegida por David Hees & Roberto DaMata para diseñar el concepto antropológico de cultura. 'Desde los años 80, el concepto de cultura se encuentra en dramática transición. [...] Para interpretar la cultura de forma abrangente, los antropólogos adoptan una postura comparativa'." (Introducción, página 9)
more
"Durante el siglo XIX se desarrollaron en Argentina distintos proyectos periodísticos. La prensa fue trinchera de opinión política, provisión de imágenes para una sociedad en transformación, representación de intereses particulares y de culturas regionales. En el año 2007 la Biblioteca Nacio
...
nal realizó un concurso de becas de investigación, bajo el nombre "Mariano Moreno", para proyectos orientados al estudio de colecciones de publicaciones periódicas. De las investigaciones seleccionadas y realizadas se publican tres en este libro. Se trata de trabajos de investigación en el sentido más profundo de la palabra. Se reconoce en ellos la travesía por los periódicos y las revistas, se percibe el tono del que fuerza sus ojos en la atención de papeles antiguos, junto con la alegría del que reconoce un hallazgo inesperado en su objeto." (Descripción de la casa editorial)
more
"This Historical Dictionary of Journalism shows both sides of the picture. The dictionary presents entries on some of the finest newspapers as well as those of lesser repute, many exceptional journalists as well as others the profession would rather forget, major advances such as investigative repor
...
ting and more questionable practices such as yellow journalism, and important topics like censorship and the continuing struggle for freedom of the press. It covers a long period of time, from the very first practitioners whose news was often sung to the most recent whose news appears in a computerized format. Last but not least, it traces the history of journalism in a large number of countries in a lengthy chronology and then an introduction, which analyzes individual developments thematically, showing how the discursive practices of journalism have evolved within a larger political, economic, and cultural context." (Editor's foreword)
more
"Les Rwandais et les Burundais ont une culture cinématographique et audiovisuelle captivante et centenaire. Elle a été introduite pendant l’époque coloniale allemande et est ensuite tombée dans les mains des Belges qui l’ont développée après. Au Rwanda/Burundi, ils produisaient des films
...
marqués par le discours colonial. Au même moment, l’imaginaire des autochtones était imprégné par le cinéma du monde (la France, l’Italie, les Etats-unis, l’Inde, le Pakistan, l’Egypte…) qui n’était guère contrôlé. Cette liberté culturelle a perduré après l’indépendance. Ainsi, la population a été confrontée au cinéma comme une expression artistique mais aussi comme un instrument de propagande. Au début, la production de cinéma et de télévision servait aux différents régimes et présidents. Après le tournant du siècle et sous l’influence du processus de Paix, les médias se sont libéralisés, favorisant ainsi, avec la révolution numérique, la production audiovisuelle. Au Rwanda, le génocide a eu une influence particulière dans le foisonnement d’initiatives privées de productions audiovisuelles et cinématographiques. Dans ce livre, Guido Convents nous invite à découvrir différents aspects de la culture audiovisuelle burundaise et rwandaise: des réalisateurs, des distributeurs, des exploitants, des comédiens, mais aussi des spectateurs, le pouvoir politique, la société civile, et tant d’autres pions. Il jette un regard, non seulement sur les images produites par les Rwandais et les Burundais mais surtout sur le rôle qu’ils attribuent au cinéma et à l’audiovisuel en général, et en particulier dans le domaine de la Paix." (Description de la maison d'édition)
more
"This dissertation discusses interactions between politics and book publishing by missions and colonial governments in areas of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia over approximately 200 years [...] From its inception, book publishing in the Pacific Islands has been a significant instrument of ideo
...
logical power [...] Far from portraying a unidirectional flow, wherein only foreigners have published information and instructed Pacific Islanders, this dissertation argues that some islanders have sought to participate in book publishing so as to express their views and/or those of their associates or communities, and this in turn has contributed to persuading and influencing other people, sometimes even across the Pacific. The organization of mission societies around publications, for example in biblical material, schoolbooks, or laws, often reinforced indigenous power, but it also eased the imposition of colonial rule. Ironically, command of text culture assisted islanders to negotiate with new and sometimes stronger political forces. The colonial era has reinforced the role of text culture in the organization of society, and published reiteration of particular languages, customs, and geographical boundaries has helped to shape and reshape polities that have endured well into the age of independent nation-states." (Abstract)
more
"The author believes that, in many respects, the history of the book remains ‘terra incognita’, despite the work that has been done in the field, and here presents a brief survey of the research that has been conducted on this topic in Germany, France and Tunisia, and the literature that is avai
...
lable. However, her overviews of the ground that has been covered in terms of research, and her short history of publishing in French-speaking Africa, pre- and post-independence, are very patchy indeed." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 2561)
more
"The heart of the book is a detailed, year-by-year account of the shortwave bands in each year from 1945 to 2008. It reviews what American listeners were hearing on the international and domestic shortwave bands, describes the arrivals and departures of stations, and recounts important events. The b
...
ook describes the several categories of broadcasters - international, domestic, private, religious, clandestine and pirate. It explains the impact of relay stations, frequency management, and jamming. It also addresses the considerable changes in shortwave broadcasting since the end of the Cold War." (Publisher description)
more