"With contributions from an international team of well-known experts, media activists, and promising young scholars, this comprehensive volume examines community-based media from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives. More than 30 original essays provide an incisive and timely analysis
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of the relationships between media and society, technology and culture, and communication and community. Key Features: provides vivid examples of community and alternative media initiatives from around the world; explores a wide range of media institutions, forms, and practices—community radio, participatory video, street newspapers, Independent Media Centers, and community informatics; offers cutting-edge analysis of community and alternative media with original essays from new, emerging, and established voices in the field; takes a multidimensional approach to community media studies by highlighting the social, economic, cultural, and political significance of alternative, independent, and community-oriented media organizations; enters the ongoing debates regarding the theory and practice of community media in a comprehensive and engaging fashion." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter examines journalism that is produced not by professionals but by those outside mainstream media organizations. Amateur media producers typically have little or no training or professional qualifi cations as journalists; they write and report from their position as citizens, as members
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of communities, as activists, as fans. This chapter will show how key writers in the subject area have understood the activities of these amateur journalists. The chapter places these activities in three categories: social movement media and citizens’ media; local alternative journalism; fanzines and blogs. It examines the major studies to show how different theoretical and ideological perspectives have infl uenced the nature of those studies." (Abstract)
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"Citizens’ media and communication are still poorly understood in the mainstream of development policy and practice – and are prone to simplistic forms of implementation, because of the lack of a coherent grasp of the social, cultural, and political processes that make them transformative. Intro
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ducing the articles in this guest issue, the authors find that citizens’ media is about more than bringing diverse voices into pluralist politics: it contributes to processes of social and cultural construction, redefining norms and power relations that exclude people. Local ownership and control of their own media can allow people to reshape the spaces in which their voices find expression." (Abstract)
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"Zwar liegt der Durchschnitt der Internetanbindungen – auch aufgrund der damit verbundenen Kosten – in Afrika mit elf Prozent der Haushalte gegenwärtig immer noch weit unter dem globalen Mittel von 23 Prozent. Dennoch haben der Ausbau der Infrastruktur, unterschiedliche Regulierungsreformen und
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kreative Geschäftsmodelle in den letzten Jahren zu einem signifikanten Anstieg der Internetnutzung in den meisten Teilen Afrikas geführt. Vor allem durch die rasante Verbreitung von Mobilfunk und gemeinschaftlich genutzter Internetanschlüsse haben sich Nutzungsmodelle entwickelt, die immer mehr Menschen Zugang zum Internet bieten. Dementsprechend finden auch in Afrika sogenannte Web-2.0-Anwendungen zunehmend Verbreitung – für persönliche und kommerzielle, aber auch für politische Zwecke. Dazu gehören soziale Netzwerkdienste wie Facebook oder SMS-Dienste wie Twitter, in erster Linie aber Weblogs. Einen Überblick zum Stand der afrikanischen Blogger-Community bietet der Aggregator „Afrigator“, der im Juli 2009 über 10 500 afrikanische Blogs aufführte. Südafrika nimmt mit 62 Prozent (rund 6400) der Blogs den weitaus größten Anteil ein, es folgen Nigeria (1094 Blogs), Kenia (555 Blogs) und Ägypten (325 Blogs)." (Seite 109)
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"The findings of the research reflect two overarching concerns: training content and training delivery. It is a central finding of the research that financial skills are required by the sector. Related to this is the need to encourage professional attitudes, processes, and systems within the sector.
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It is necessary to manage the business in a professional manner in order to gain the support of the community as well as advertisers. Such support contributes to the sustainability of the business. In terms of delivery, on-site training, mentorships and information exchange are emphasised because of the managers’ time and resource constraints. While accredited, theoretical training is perceived as important and worthwhile, participants emphasised the importance of experiential training. The research concludes with a detailed outline of a new qualification the SPI will be seeking to register which will enable it to make a contribution to the small independent community newspaper sector. The research has encountered one central obstacle. The sector is characterised by competition and lack of resources, thus managers are not able to leave their businesses for extended periods of time, and do not always answer telephone calls or emails that are not an immediate priority." (Executive summary, page 2-3)
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"In environments where poor infrastructure, minimal access to technology, and small-scale economies impede the creation or sustainability of mainstream independent media, and in countries where repressive governments limit the ability of professional journalists to operate freely, citizen journalist
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s are filling the gaps. Yet citizen journalists often have no formal journalism training nor - perhaps more critically - any training in the essential roles independent media play in ensuring accountable and transparent government. This report investigates how the U.S. government, international institutions, and private foundations are trying to teach this new cohort of semi-journalists to be media literate." (Executive summary)
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"Through case studies of blogs written in English, Chinese, Arab, French, Russian, and Hebrew, this book explores the way blogging is being conceptualized in different cultural contexts. The authors move beyond the most highly trafficked sites to shed light on larger developments taking place online
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, calling into question assumptions that form the foundation of much of what we read on blogging and, by extension, on global amateur or do-it-yourself media. This book suggests a more nuanced approach to understanding how blogospheres serve communication needs, how they exist in relation to one another, where they exist apart as well as where they overlap, and how they interact with other forms of communication in the larger media landscape." (Publisher description)
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"Die achtziger und neunziger Jahre bringen eine Blüte der Alternativbewegung. Thomas Daum wertet das 1981 im Katalog zur 6. Mainzer Minipressen Messe so: „Die Alternativbewegung zeichnet sich aus durch Offenheit und Vielfalt, sie kann andere, parallel laufende Bewegungen integrieren.“ Von nun a
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n wird aus der Gegenöffentlichkeit die neue Öffentlichkeit: Es reicht nicht, dagegen zu sein, man will für die eigenen Utopien überzeugen. Nach den Stadtzeitungen entstehen nicht kommerzielle Lokalradios, offene Kanäle, Foren, Communities und Plattformen im Internet. Was heute alternativ ist, kann morgen schon etabliert und kommerziell sein. Und das ist gerade der Reiz an der Sache. Adrian Reinert, Geschäftsführer der Stiftung Mitarbeit, sieht 2002 beim Forum „Die Bürgergesellschaft in der Diskussion“ rundum positive Aspekte alternativen Engagements: „Zivilgesellschaftliche Netzwerke tragen nicht nur wesentlich zur Bildung von Sozialkapital bei, sondern sind wichtige Lernorte politischen Lernens.“ Alternativmedien sind damit als neue Medien zum einen Medienalternativen und zum anderen Wegweiser für neue gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen. Der Alternative Medienpreis wird diese spannende Entwicklung begleiten, unterstützen, aber auch kritisch hinterfragen." (Vorwort, Seite 7-8)
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"A major limitation in the development and protection of people’s media in Thailand is the unstable and highly polarized political environment in which governments are short-lived and the constitution is not taken seriously as the fundamental law of the land. As a result, media have become tools i
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n larger political struggles. This analysis demonstrates that while several foundational elements necessary to promote people’s media are emerging in Thailand, others are still lacking. A clear understanding of people’s media as distinguished from both state and commercialmedia has recently gained strength. Yet, constitutional protections for people’s communication rights are nevertheless undermined by politicized media laws that in practice carry more weight than the constitution and prevent people from acting on their communication rights with confidence. This article explores these issues, and discusses two forms in which people’s media have found a space to operate – community radio and Internet-based people’s media. The analysis finds that while these media still find themselves struggling to survive a complex and constantly shifting policy environment, the basic concept of communication rights has taken hold, in the process providing lessons for people’s media elsewhere." (Abstract)
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"A wide range of audiences now accesses Indigenous community radio and television across Australia. This article draws from the first-ever audience study of the sector, ‘Community Media Matters’, completed in 2007. It reveals that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander media offer an essential se
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rvice to communities and play a central organising role in community life. Although previous studies into the Australian Indigenous media sector have suggested this, it is the first time that audiences from the cities to the most remote parts of the continent have had a chance to confirm the importance of locally produced media in their lives. This has revealed new insights into the nature of the relationship between audiences and the producers of Indigenous community radio and television." (Abstract)
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"Comprehensive and practical, this textbook enables students to connect academic study and professional know-how, and demonstrates how to best plan the rebuilding, revitalization and development of communities utilizing a wide variety of economic and strategic tools. Features include; chapter outlin
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es, text boxes, key words and references." (Publisher description)
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"Stealing Empire poses the question, "What possibilities for agency exist in the age of corporate globalisation?" Using the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt as a point of entry, Adam Haupt delves into varied terrain to locate answers in this ground-breaking inquiry. He explores arguments abou
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t copyright via peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms such as Napster, free speech struggles, debates about access to information and open content licenses, and develops a politically incisive analysis of counterdiscourses produced by South African hip-hop artists. From empire stealing through their commodification of countercultures to the stealing empire activities of file-sharers, culture jammers and hip-hop activists, this book tells the story of people defining themselves as active, creative agents in a consumerist society." (Publisher description)
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"Blogs are more or less controllable for those who want to keep them under surveillance. Governments that are most up to do date with new technology use the most sophisticated filtering or blocking techniques, preventing them from appearing on the Web at all. But bloggers don't just sit back and let
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it happen. The essential question becomes how to blog in complete safety. With a normal IP address, a blogger can be tracked down and arrested. Anonymity allows them to keep their freedom.
In countries where censorship holds sway, blogs are sometimes the only source of news. During the events in Burma in the autumn of 2007, pitting monks and the people against the military junta, bloggers were the main source of news for foreign journalists. Their video footage made it possible to gauge the scale of the protests and what demonstrators' demands were. For more than two months, marches were held in the streets, then a massive crackdown was launched against opponents that only the Burmese were able to show, so hard did it become for the few foreign journalists who managed to enter the country to get back out with their footage. And bloggers could not get the footage out without getting round online censorship imposed by the government. This handbook seeks to help every blogger to fill in the "black holes" In news. The second part is devoted to techniques which can thwart filtering technology." (Page 4-5)
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