"This ethnographic study explores how four alternative media projects in El Salvador integrated digital technologies-particularly social media-into their practices, and whether incorporating these technologies affected citizen participation not only in the media production process, but in a broader
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discursive sphere of civic and political life as well. Summer Harlow investigates the factors that influence the extent to which alternative media producers are able to use digital tools in liberating ways for social change by opening a space for participation in technology (as content producers) andthrough technology (as engaged citizens). The book advances existing literature with two main contributions: extending our understanding of the digital divide to include inequalities of social media use, and including technology use-whether liberating or not-as a fundamental component of a mestizaje approach to the study of alternative media." (Publisher description)
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"En el “Seminario Latinoamericano: Internet, Redes Sociales y Radios Comunitarias” se busco conjuntamente entre académicos, activistas de medios, comunicadores comunitarios y gestores culturales, exponer una gran diversidad de reflexiones acerca del estado de la comunicación en la región desd
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e las perspectivas de apropiación y reapropiación de tecnologías, desde las organizaciones sociales que se han expresado históricamente, por medio de radios comunitarias, como también las comunidades que han emergido gracias al uso de plataformas sociales y herramientas digitales en los últimos años." (Descripción de la casa editorial)
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"With the intercession of the new media, individuals were able to write news and publish videos through their participations on Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. This article is centered on citizen journalism which comes from the participation of citizens in making news. T
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he main purpose of this article is to show the relationship between citizen journalism and mainstream journalism in covering Syrian news, and how peace journalism represents in both. A questionnaire designed to analyze the content of five Syrian events on Aljazeera news channel. The five Syrian events are Al- Bayda and Baniyas, the siege of Bab Amr, al Qusair and Khalidiya in Homs, Yarmouk camp, chemical on Al Gota. Result shows that Aljazeera uses a significant number of footages and contents which came from Syrian citizen journalists; it is presented as 46.3 %. Due to shared political agendas between Aljazeera and citizen journalists, Aljazeera depends on their footages more than their own reporters while they are covering Syrian news. Majority of footages reflect Syrian opposition and the killing of Syrians which resulted from Al-Assad Regime. We suggest that news content published by citizen journalists on their blogs and YouTube should be analyzed for other studies." (Abstract)
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"Leonardo Custódio provides multifaceted analyses of how favela youth engage in individual and collective media activist initiatives despite social class constraints and neoliberal imperatives in their everyday life. This book details processes experienced by young favela residents while becoming i
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ndividuals who act to challenge and change patterns of discrimination, governmental neglect and drug-related violence." (Publisher description)
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"Citizen Media and Public Spaces presents a pioneering exploration of citizen media as a highly interdisciplinary domain that raises vital political, social and ethical issues relating to conceptions of citizenship and state boundaries, the construction of publics and social imaginaries, processes o
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f co-optation and reverse co-optation, power and resistance, the ethics of witnessing and solidarity, and novel responses to the democratic deficit. Framed by a substantial introduction by the editors, the twelve contributions to the volume interrogate the concept of citizen media theoretically and empirically, and offer detailed case studies that extend from the UK to Russia and Bulgaria and from China to Denmark and the liminal spaces within which a growing number of refugees now live. A rich new domain of scholarship and practice emerges out of the studies presented. Citizen media is shown to embrace both physical and digital interventions in public space, as well as the sets of values and agendas that influence and drive the practices and discourses through which individuals and collectives position themselves within and in relation to society and participate in the creation of diverse publics." (Publisher description)
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"Consumption-Critical media practices are those practices which are either using media for criticising (certain) consumption or which are (consciously practiced) alternatives to the consumption of media technologies such as repairing, exchanging or producing durable media technologies. While the for
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mer can be found on the level of media content, the latter are practiced on the levels of production and appropriation. This article aims at conceptualizing the phenomenon ‘consumption-Critical media practices’ by analysing examples on the levels of media production, appropriation and content. Moreover, consumption-Critical media practices are discussed as political participation as they are aiming at shaping and changing society – often striving for sustainability." (Abstract)
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"Welche publizistischen Angebote können gemacht werden, damit das Interesse der Bürger am eigenen Umfeld (wieder) zunimmt? Wie kann die lokale, demokratische Öffentlichkeit gestärkt werden? Diese Fragen werden im vorliegenden Buch untersucht. Im Rahmen des Bundesprogramms „Zusammenhalt durch T
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eilhabe“ wurde das jeweilige Kommunikationsgefüge der Landkreise Ludwigslust (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) und Vogtlandkreis (Sachsen) analysiert. Im Fokus standen acht Orte mit 2.100 bis zu 20.000 Einwohnern. Insgesamt zeigt die Untersuchung, dass Bürgerzeitungen – sowohl durch Nutzung als auch durch redaktionelle Mitarbeit – das örtliche Engagement der Bürger stärken können. Heimatgefühl und Engagement sind miteinander verzahnt, ein Modell zeigt diese wechselseitigen Einflussfaktoren auf." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This article presents two communities in Uganda that use Community Audio Towers (CATs) as an alternative to community radio, and examines why the communities prefer the use of CATs to ‘mainstream’ community radio. Using data collected through observation at two sites in Uganda and 10 key inform
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ant interviews from major communication stakeholders, including Uganda’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology, the article presents findings indicating that CATs are self-sustaining, with no NGO influence, and they redefine news to mean local emergencies and occurrences, while having no structures (horizontal/vertical rhetoric) as they are started and run by one community member. The challenges of the new alternative media are also discussed." (Abstract)
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"This book examines the use of “civic media”—the technologies, designs, and practices that support connection through common purpose in civic, political, and social life. Scholars from a range of disciplines and practitioners from a variety of organizations offer analyses and case studies that
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explore the theory and practice of civic media. The contributors set out the conceptual context for the intersection of civic and media; examine the pressure to innovate and the sustainability of innovation; explore play as a template for resistance; look at civic education; discuss media-enabled activism in communities; and consider methods and funding for civic media research. The case studies that round out each section range from a “debt resistance” movement to government service delivery ratings to the “It Gets Better” campaign aimed at combating suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth. The book offers a valuable interdisciplinary dialogue on the challenges and opportunities of the increasingly influential space of civic media." (Publisher description)
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"This paper examines the role of open source research in human rights fact-finding and seeks to address a gap in the current literature, which lacks a human rights perspective, is dominated by journalistic approaches, or focuses on specific tools. It focuses on citizen media, the visual subset of op
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en source information, and provides a practitioner’s perspective that is based on several years of analyzing open source materials for a global human rights group. The paper includes case studies on video and image verification, and identifies best and worst practices. The author argues that open source content, specifically citizen media, can play a crucial and increasingly important role in human rights documentation, if analyzed using sound and transparent methodologies based on well-established factfinding principles. It presents, for the first time, a tool-independent analytical framework that will allow both seasoned and new human rights researchers to review and assess open source content. Specific recommendations are offered for human rights organizations, funders, academics, and technology companies in order to realize the full potential of open source content for human rights documentation." (Abstract)
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"Initial growth in Internet use in the 1990s resulted in many digital pioneers viewing new information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a means to radically empower people through new global connections and extensive social capital. This has extended into an interest in exploring how ICTs ca
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n contribute to international development, and particularly in the field of ICT for development (ICT4D). Evidence from the minority and majority worlds has tempered some of this initial enthusiasm and visions of technological determinism. This article is structured around a piece of coproduced writing to reflect on a project in a deprived neighbourhood in Edinburgh, Scotland, to empower a community through new technology and digital art. The approach involved social history in the form of an archive of images of the neighbourhood, a blog and Facebook page, and a range of physical outputs including social history walking guides and a digital totem pole. The article sets the coproduced paper in the broader literature on ICTs in community development to draw out lessons on the challenges and also the strengths of using novel methods to engage communities. While ICTs cannot develop extensive social capital within deprived neighbourhoods, it was clear that they can offer low-cost ways for institutional social capital to be developed improving partnership working." (Abstract)
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"Social or not, we contend that there is substantially more room for commercial practices and enterprises in the independent news space than has generally been recognized. A primary goal of this book is to show journalists and entrepreneurs how they may occupy that space through stakeholder-driven m
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edia. First, in Chapters One and Two we will set out key components of business models. From that base we will distinguish stakeholder-driven media (SDM) from mainstream media (MSM), in particular where their value propositions are concerned. We will then explore current variations on these principles in SDM. At the end of the book we will return to this theme, through outlining SDM enterprises that may soon emerge. Our predictive track record is not perfect, but it’s not bad; in 2010 we predicted that media focused on fact-checking would become a growth sector, and in 2016 there are well over 100 of them around the world. Replace: Fact-checking played a key role in the 2016 U.S. election, too. We also believe that stakeholder-driven media are changing the strategies by which “impact” is achieved in journalism; this is the subject of Chapter Three. The landmark research of David L. Protess and his colleagues showed that investigative journalism achieves reforms most often through a sustained effort involving a coalition of social and institutional forces, and rarely from a single “mobilizing” article or series in any media. Put another way, the broader story – how events play out over time – trumps the scoop; the last word beats the first word. That finding directly inspired our own research into how SDM achieve reform, and sensitized us to why MSM may not always be the ideal vehicle for journalism that seeks to change the world: In practice, MSM rarely stick around for the broader story. Likewise, non-profit investigative journalism centers – who, as we noted, typically rely on MSM to publish their stories – rarely follow their blockbuster stories across the years required to achieve reform or relief for victims. This is considered advocacy, not objective or even credible reporting. In contrast, stakeholder-driven media consider advocacy part of their mission. They exist, precisely, to defend the interests of a community of practice or interest, to help carry through its agenda. That may not make them credible to MSM, but it certainly makes them credible to their users. SDM do not go on to the next story and forget the preceding one. They pursue a story so long as it matters to their stakeholders – their community. They are thus capable of achieving results over time that MSM rarely attain. For that reason, serious journalists are well advised to see how they may collaborate with SDM as well as MSM. Because of stakeholder-driven media, the notion that the attention of MSM is required to set reform agendas is no longer as true as it was when sociologist Michael Lipsky famously described how activists use news media to dramatize their demonstrations and embarrass authorities into action.3 We have studied numerous cases in which SDM, not MSM, determined the outcome. We have seen that the MSM have lost a surprising share of their previous agenda-setting influence, and SDM have gained it. We will show you how, and we will show you how you can capture and wield that influence yourself. We hope you will do it for the benefit of your own community, as well as the rest of the world." (Page 9-10)
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