"This study explores how news channels from the Global South challenge western narratives by co-producing TV programmes. It focuses on Telesur (Venezuela) and its collaborations with RT (Russia), Al-Mayadeen (Lebanon) and CCTV/CGTN (China). By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this pap
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er examines the structure of these collaborations, the discursive construction of alternative narratives and their contribution to countering hegemonic discourses. The findings show that the efforts to construct counterhegemonic narratives are most evident in the co-productions with RT and Al-Mayadeen. Although the co-production with CGTN focusses on culture, it is nonetheless possible to identify the broadcasters’ distinct ideological agendas." (Abstract)
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"In this industry reflection I draw on my professional interest in Brazilian film production an distribution and my archival research of Brazilian films exhibited in the UK between 1995 and 2019 in order to reflect on the factors which help such productions travel and the challenges which they face.
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During the last twenty-five years, following the so-called renaissance of Brazilian cinema, there has been a constant increase in the number of films shown in Brazilian cinemas but, to achieve financial sustainability, filmmakers had to look abroad as well. While the search for financing and partners in other countries should allow the creation of works that possess storytelling appeal and more inviting identities to circulate internationally, the majority of Brazilian films released on UK screens rely on stereotypical depictions, well-known authors and/or powerful international distribution companies. Brazilian national institutions, such as Ancine, and international festivals, such as BFI London Film Festival (LFF), have helped increase visibility for Brazilian productions abroad but more could be done to foster new directorial voices, release strategies and coproduction partnerships." (Abstract)
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"The influence of Russian state-run foreign media (RT, Sputnik et al.) on public opinion in Western democracies is now common knowledge - regardless of its political qualification. Well-documented analyses are available, e.g., from the USA, France and Germany. The German government has also repeated
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ly pointed out the dangers of Russian state propaganda for the German media landscape. The European Parliament has repeatedly called for member states to adopt strategies against "hostile propaganda" from Moscow. The EU Commission has set up a small department to detect fake Russian news." (Introduction)
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"Während in Russland immer mehr unabhängige Medien der staatlichen Kontrolle unterworfen und als „ausländische Agenten“ gebrandmarkt werden, nutzen die russischen Staatsmedien die Meinungs- und Pressefreiheit in Deutschland, um ungehindert Desinformation zu verbreiten. Nach acht Jahren Berich
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terstattung von RT DE und Sputnik/SNA ist ein kritischer Punkt erreicht, auf den die Verantwortlichen für Medien reagieren sollten. Während der Corona-Krise ist mehr als deutlich geworden, dass RT und SNA eine politische Agenda verfolgen, die darin besteht, das „System“ und damit die Demokratie in Deutschland anzugreifen und die autoritäre Herrschaft in Russland als bessere Alternative zu propagieren. Schon im März 2020 warnte das Innenministerium, dass RT Deutsch „die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung“ durch „gezielten Falschmeldungen“ bedrohe [...] Die russischen Staatsmedien – insbesondere in Russland – schaffen ein Feindbild „Westen“, mit dem sie die Menschen nicht nur in Russland, sondern auch in den westlichen Staaten verunsichern oder zum Widerstand mobilisieren. Das Schüren von Ängsten vor einem Krieg und die überzogene Darstellung vom dekadenten, gottlosen Westen sind dabei zwei zentrale Narrative. Dieses Feindbild wird seit Frühjahr 2021 vor allem mit den Grünen in Verbindung gebracht, die angeblich kriegerische Absichten gegenüber Russland verfolgen und dem Klimaschutz als „neuer Religion“ frönen. Die Berichterstattung zu den Bundestagswahlen hat gezeigt, dass das erste Ziel war, eine Grüne im Kanzleramt zu verhindern. Gegen Annalena Baerbock wurden unbelegte Vorwürfe wie nationalsozialistisches Gedankengut erhoben, um sie zu diskreditieren." (Fazit, Seite 24)
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"The topic of the war in Ukraine dominated the media during the first three months of the war and completely marginalized all other topics. The most foreign actor reported on most in the media was Russia, while the countries of the West, the US, the EU, and NATO were far less noticeable. Although th
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e initial open support for Russia has softened since the beginning of the war, the media continue to report in favour of Russia, and against the West. Television stations with national coverage (especially their morning news programmes), as well as parts of the daily press, are at the forefront of supporting Russia. Internet portals have a more balanced approach. Among state officials, President Vucic has monopolized the discussions of the war in Ukraine, and he is the person most credited in the media for establishing Serbia's neutral stance on this issue. Disinformation in the media is placed in such a way as to present Russia in a positive light, and the West negatively. Disinformation was most prevalent on internet portals and the printed edition of Vecernje novosti, the daily Informer, and television stations Pink and Happy." (Key findings)
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"Each year, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) publishes a list of the ten most neglected displacement crises in the world. The purpose is to focus on the plight of people whose suffering rarely makes international headlines, who receive no or inadequate assistance, and who never become the centre
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of attention for international diplomacy efforts. This is the list for 2021. For the first time, all of the ten crises are on the African continent. That many African countries are figuring high on the list is far from new. For example, the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has become a textbook example of neglect, featuring in this list six times in a row. Most international media outlets rarely cover these countries beyond ad hoc reporting on new outbreaks of violence or disease, and in several African countries the lack of press freedom is exacerbating the situation. Then there’s donor fatigue, and the fact that many African countries are deemed to be of limited geopolitical interest. The low level of funding limits the ability of humanitarian organisations both to provide adequate humanitarian relief and to do effective advocacy and communication work for these crises, creating a vicious circle." (Page 4)
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"This thesis uses a comparative case study to examine Tanzania and Ghana, two countries where China has contributed or sold large amounts of infrastructure, but who have seen different political reactions to and uses of this infrastructure. It poses the question: how do we explain the differing path
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s these two emerging democracies take in their political utilization of unregulated digital infrastructure investment? By analyzing elections and regulation in both countries over a period of roughly 15 years, this thesis examines the role that the timing of the introduction of digital infrastructure plays in each country's political reaction. It argues that in Tanzania, where digital infrastructure was adopted later than Ghana, country leaders perceived the internet as a threat to their hold on power and therefore internally developed a 'normal' standard of behavior and governance that was much less open. Ultimately, it concludes that countries combine internal concepts with outside rhetoric, both from China and the Global North, to justify their actions internationally." (Abstract)
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"Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become a crucial sector of China–Africa relations. As scholars have noted, Africa’s 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) risks transforming into a new ‘scramble’ with foreign actors harnessing Africa’s data. The present article explores th
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is issue at a discursive level, i.e. delving into policies, bilateral agreements, and laws. The focus is specifically on Kenya in that it is one of the most developed ICT markets in Africa and it is here that the Chinese tech giant Huawei began its investments in 1998. Via a document review, the article provides a preliminary discursive assessment of the extent to which Kenyan actors are effectively (dis)empowered with regard to their own 4IR. The analysis shows that both pan-African and bilateral agreements remain at a high level of abstraction: while this is the typical Chinese way of framing discourses on technological innovation, it also leaves room for political manoeuvring and potential forms of data colonialism." (Abstract)
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"This paper measures how often audiences in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa consume Chinese media, and investigates whether a positive relationship exists between the consumption of English language Chinese media and attitudes towards China. Method: We analyze three waves of survey data collected in
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2017/2018, 2020 and 2021 (N = 5876) in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Findings: We show that, while Chinese State-owned news media have a growing but limited following, the minority of media users who report getting news from Chinese media have better attitudes towards China than those who don’t. Implications: Our findings suggest that Beijing’s external communication activities might have the potential to fulfil Beijing’s goal of improving the country’s image overseas, provided that media reached a wider audience." (Abstract)
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"As Africa’s digital dynamism grows, its participation in global digital policy must increase. In this transition, African countries have to navigate the geopolitical realities of our times. This study provides a snapshot of Africa’s digital diplomacy by examining the holistic representations of
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national and continental interests in the digital realm. In addition to the role of official diplomacy, this study also looks at the roles of tech developers, businesses, local communities, and others with the necessary skills and expertise for participation in international digital policy. It is critical that many African countries mobilise all human and institutional resources to enable their active engagement in digital foreign policy and diplomacy. While most African countries are in the early phase of their digital diplomacy journey, there are many practices and initiatives that could help a faster take off of digital diplomacy in Africa. These practices and initiatives are identified in this study with many concrete examples, 55 charts and infographics, over 500 references, and case studies of 8 African countries." (About this study)
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"Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, policymakers worldwide have taken measures to curb the reach of Russia’s foreign communication outlets, RT and Sputnik. Mapping the audiences of these outlets in 21 countries, we show that in the quarter before the invasion, at least via their official we
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bsites and mobile apps, neither outlet reached more than 5% of the digital populations of any of these countries each month. Averaged across all countries, both outlets’ website and mobile app reach remained approximately constant between 2019 and 2021, was higher for men, and increased with audiences’ age." (Abstract)
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"This book presents a new perspective on how Russia projects itself to the world. Distancing itself from familiar, agency-driven International Relations accounts that focus on what 'the Kremlin' is up to and why, it argues for the need to pay attention to deeper, trans-state processes over which the
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Kremlin exerts much less control. Especially important in this context is mediatization, defined as the process by which contemporary social and political practices adopt a media form and follow media-driven logics. In particular, the book emphasizes the logic of the feedback loop or 'recursion', showing how it drives multiple Russian performances of national belonging and nation projection in the digital era. It applies this theory to recent issues, events and scandals that have played out in international arenas ranging from television, through theatre, film, and performance art, to warfare." (Publisher description)
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"In posts by Chinese diplomats, the US, NATO and the West were almost exclusively blamed or criticised for Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Russia was not specifically blamed. The most common posts shared news relating to the conflict (including readouts of Xi Jinping’s calls with world
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leaders), primarily from Chinese state media. Those articles usually presented China’s and, where they aligned, Russia’s views of the conflict. They frequently reported on the actions of Chinese officials reiterating China’s position. Chinese diplomats repeated Russian conspiracy theories about US biological weapon labs in Ukraine with gusto and linked the alleged activities to conspiracy theories about the origin of Covid-19. Posts about Ukraine on Facebook mostly underperformed compared to regular posts, except in Europe. On Twitter, Ukraine material appeared to broadly perform better than non-Ukraine material, particularly when the content attacked or blamed the West. Chinese diplomats did not appear to specifically target the Chinese diaspora (by posting in Chinese) in posts about Ukraine to any significant extent on Facebook or Twitter. A selection of CGTN content on YouTube largely mirrored the narratives of the Chinese officials on Twitter and Facebook." (Executive summary)
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"The research – based on programmatic text-mining supported analyses of several millions of war-related comments scraped by Sentione and further examined with CrowdTangle - found traces of inauthentic, repetitive pro-Kremlin activity on Facebook in all countries under review, which can be consider
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ed attempts to influence public opinion in the affected states and, in some cases, beyond them. Our main conclusions are: Crises help the Kremlin. Even if public opinion in the EU is currently unfavorable to the Kremlin, the onset of high, permanent inflation, soaring energy prices and the looming danger of an EU-wide recession could create a more favorable environment for the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts. Most (covertly) Kremlin-friendly forces will adopt a rhetoric blasting sanctions for harming Europe more than Russia. Importing disinformation narratives. Three out of the four narratives found in Hungary were imported into the country from abroad. One doubting Ukraine’s existence as a country started from an organization connected to Ukrainian pro-Putin oligarch Viktor Medvechuk, taken over by the so-called “news agency” of separatists. Another narrative detailing a new, dictatorial world order based on, among others, COVID-19 restrictions, and led by NATO was aimed at developing countries where Russia can hope to hold more sway. The third essentially took over a trend in the Russian media space: users tried to discredit anti-war voices by asking them “where they were in the past eight years” when Ukraine committed atrocities against minorities. Strategies in Germany: Divide and Rule. The six relevant narratives we found in Germany employed three different strategies. The first was anti-Westernism, where the US and NATO are to blame for Russia’s attack. The second aimed clearly at generating debates by spreading a Kremlin-critical narrative. Some profiles involved in this were caught disseminating both pro-Kremlin and anti-Kremlin narratives, which indicates it is not intended to counter the Kremlin’s information operation but to be a part of it. The third strategy was about exploiting contemporary events - such as heightened discussions on sanctions and rising inflation." (Executive summary)
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"Danny Schmidt analysiert, wie führende deutsche Medien über Russland schreiben. Artikel der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, des Neuen Deutschlands, des Spiegels, der Süddeutschen Zeitung und der Welt zeichnen ein deutliches Bild. Der Blickwinkel ist verengt, die Perspektivenvielfalt reduziert,
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ein neutraler Blick nicht immer gegeben. Historische Diskurse reaktivieren Stereotype und befeuern Ressentiments. Die Folge ist die Konstruktion eines vitalen Feindbildes, das im Krieg in der Ukraine traurige Realität geworden ist." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Maidan, Krim und Russland bilden 2014 einen Fokus der Berichterstattung, als Proteste v. a. in Kiew in eine Staatskrise münden und die Halbinsel Krim von Russland annektiert wird. Diese einschneidenden Ereignisse werden von Medien eingeordnet und in Sinnzusammenhänge eingebettet. Die vorliegende
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Medien-Frame-Analyse untersucht das Bild, das seinerzeit in den kommentierenden Texten der reichweitenstärksten deutschen Printmedien geprägt wurde. Sie begreift Meinung als über den Begriff des Frames in den Texten nachweisbar, den sie theoretisch daraus herleitet, wie Menschen mit (Eigen-)Kategorien die Welt verstehen und sortieren. Mit einer operationalisierbaren Definition des Begriffes Frame können so die Meinungsspektren nachgezeichnet werden." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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