"This investigation is about how Chinese overseas online commentators (COOCs) respond to political discourses on China. COOCs present the ideological heterogeneity of Chinese overseas. Their diverse responses to different ideological debates show patterns that manifest how the Chinese diaspora enact
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their positional cultural identification. The analysis of the data showed that on both sides of the divide, the debate leads commentators to assume positions of attachment to, or detachment from, their Chinese cultural affiliations not in a set of binary oppositions but as a continuum with varying degrees. Along this division line, internal fragmentation can be further identified by different views of China’s external tension with other world powers. The notable internal complexity can arguably represent the nation’s maturation." (Abstract)
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"Serious communication gaps between the humanitarian sector and refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, are increasing refugee suffering and putting lives at risk. There are clear indications that these information gaps are hampering the aid response and that despite important efforts from individual agencies, c
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urrent communication strategies for affected communities are not working as effectively as they could, and critical coordination needs to be improved. These are the clear indications from the joint Communications Needs Assessment led by Internews in collaboration with Star FM and Radio Ergo/IMS and with support from NRC. The assessment included an extensive survey of more than 600 refugees in all three of Dadaab’s camps. Overall results from the survey show that large numbers of refugees don’t have the information they need to access basic aid: More than 70% of newly-arrived refugees say they lack information on how to register for aid and similar numbers say they need information on how to locate missing family members. High figures are also recorded for lack of information on how to access health, shelter, how to communicate with family outside the camps and more." (Executive summary, page 4)
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"The 2009 presidential elections and the surrounding events represent one of the most dramatic moments in contemporary Iranian history. The massive demonstrations over the official election results soon evolved into a broad protest movement demanding civil rights and political change, confronting th
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e Islamic Republic with a significant crisis. When the Iranian regime responded with widespread repression, journalists were among its main targets – many were arrested, or pressurised, and some are still in prison; more than 100 have left their country in the biggest exodus of journalists since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In this book, 12 Iranian journalists, exiled after the election crisis, deliver poignant accounts of the events and their personal experiences during those days. In their articles they describe the agitation during the election campaign and the initial protests as well as the period of repression and arrests that followed. Others analyse the key moments of the protest movement or reflect on their life and work in exile. All authors hail from a new generation of professional journalists deeply involved in the struggle for reform and the democratisation of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Their writings not only provide records of the turbulent developments after the elections, but also attest to a political culture that cannot fail to change their country." (Publisher description)
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"Los lectores encontrarán en un primer momento el bosquejo de los objetivos de la investigación con una descripción de la metodología del trabajo de campo. Este segmento nos permite argumentar por qué nos hemos decantado por un estudio cualitativo que permite indagar sobre los detalles de los d
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iscursos, de las construcciones enunciativas sobre las prácticas culturales. Nos interesan las concordancias, pero también las discordancias [...] En el segundo capítulo desarrollamos un breve repaso de los estudios más destacados sobre las diásporas contemporáneas y los medios de comunicación [...] Nos detenemos en los apuntes sobre Colombia y Ecuador, países en los que hemos centrado nuestra atención para intentar comprender las tendencias en los comportamientos cotidianos, la comunicación directa y mediada y, sobre todo, las relaciones familiares directas y transnacionales. En el tercer capítulo se realiza un repaso de todos aquellos estudios que han aportado pistas sobre la inmigración latinoamericana y el consumo cultural. Desde encuestas, sondeos y estudios cualitativos, aportamos el telón de fondo sobre el que descansa este trabajo exploratorio: desde la centralidad de los medios y los usos de las nuevas tecnologías, pasando por la convivencia en el hogar, los envíos de remesas y la participación en actividades deportivas, culturales y asociativas. El cuarto capítulo lo constituye el análisis de los discursos de nuestros informantes. A partir de la elaboración de los grupos de discusión y las entrevistas en profundidad nos proponemos aportar nuevos hallazgos sobre los usos y los consumos culturales y mediáticos. Hemos querido escuchar las voces de los migrantes latinoamericanos internacionales desde sus percepciones individuales hasta las estrategias identitarias colectivas, pasando por la evaluación crítica sobre la oferta y la demanda de los medios producidos por y para inmigrantes latinoamericanos y para la sociedad española en general. Hemos explorado el valor que tienen la música, la influencia de los amigos y la familia y los lazos afectivos y tecnológicos con las “comunidades imaginadas”: aquellas que se quedaron en el lugar de origen y aquellas que se construyen en el limbo o entre las dos orillas. Finalmente, los lectores encontrarán algunas ideas a modo de conclusión y propuestas de acción." (Introducción, página 6-7)
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"This thesis considers how the mediation of poverty in Canada and the United Kingdom influences responses to the issue of poverty. The thesis focuses in particular on the issue dynamics concerning children as constructions of a “deserving poor” and immigrants as constructions of an “undeservin
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g poor”. A frame analysis of mainstream news content in both countries demonstrates the extent to which individualizing and rationalizing frames dominate coverage, and that the publication of the news online is not leading to an expansion of discourses, as hoped. A frame analysis of alternative news coverage and coverage from the 1960s and 70s demonstrates significant absences of social justice frames and rights-based discourse in contemporary coverage. I suggest that mainstream news coverage narrows and limits the way poverty is talked about in a way that reinforces the dominance of neoliberalism and market-based approaches to the issue. Interviews with journalists, politicians, researchers and activists collectively indicate that getting media coverage is essential to gaining political attention in both countries. These interviews also reveal the power dynamics influencing the relationships between these actors and the way the issue of poverty is approached. I argue that while new media tools create new opportunities to share information, these tools are also creating new pressures by speeding up the working practices in mediated political centres in a way that forecloses potentials to challenge dominant news coverage and approaches to poverty. However, this cross-national comparison also reveals context-specific factors influencing poverty politics in each country. I conclude that this analysis and comparison of poverty issue dynamics reveals shortcomings in the democratic processes in both countries. Changing poverty coverage and approaches to the issue will require changing specific media and political practices." (Abstract)
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"This report offers four recommendations for addressing some of the complex challenges of independent media in exile: donor groups should expand and formalize coordination of their exile-media support [...]; organizations providing international media training should actively seek to train exile-med
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ia journalists [...]; a formal international association of exile media should be established; the exile-media organizations themselves should take some of the initiative." (Executive summary, page 5)
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"This study examines the place of new media in the maintance of Burmese diasporic identities. Political oppression in Burma, the experience of exile and the importance of opposition movements in the borderlands make the Burmese diaspora a unique and complex group. This study uses tapoetethakot, an i
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ndigenous Karen research methodology, to explore aspects of new media use and identity among a group of Burmese refugees in Auckland, New Zealand. Common among all participants was a twin desire to share stories of suffering and to have that pain recognised. Participants in this project try to maintain their language and cultural practices, with the intent of returning to a democratic Burma in the future. New media supports this, by providing participants with access to opposition news reports of human rights abuses and suffering; through making cultural and linguistic artifacts accessible, and through providing an easy means of communication with friends and family in Burma and the borderlands." (Abstract)
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"This study investigates the role of the diaspora online media as stakeholders in the transnational Ethiopian media landscape. Through content analysis of selected websites and interviews with editors, the research discusses how the sites relate to recognized journalistic ideals and how the editors
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view themselves in regard to journalistic professionalism. It is argued that the journalistic ideals of the diaspora media must be understood towards the particular political conditions in homeland Ethiopia. Highly politicized, the diaspora websites display a marked critical attitude towards the Ethiopian government through an activist journalism approach. The editors differ slightly among themselves in the perception of whether activist journalism is in conflict with ideal-type professional norms, but they justify the practice either because of the less than ideal conditions back home or because they maintain that the combination of activism and professionalism is a forward-looking journalism ideology. The online initiatives of the Ethiopian diaspora are found to prolong media contestations in the homeland as well as reinforcing an ideal-type professional journalism paradigm." (Abstract)
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"This paper explores the political and psychological angles of white South African and Serbian diasporas’ discourses on-line. On the basis of textual analysis of diasporic websites we argue that participants speak of ongoing grievance over the loss of their countries and assert that they have been
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the victims of “unjust” history and globalisation. Each online discourse articulates claims of belonging not on the grounds of, for example, citizenship or multiculturalism, but rather on the basis of “a victim-hood”, “civilisation”, and “grief”." (Abstract)
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"This paper demonstrates the extent to which the media and belonging in Africa are torn between competing and often conflicting claims of bounded and flexible ideas of culture and identity. It draws on studies of xenophobia in Cameroon and South Africa, inspired by the resilience of the politicizati
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on of culture and identity, to discuss the hierarchies and inequalities that underpin political, economic and social citizenship in Africa and the world over, and the role of the media in the production, enforcement and contestation of these hierarchies and inequalities. In any country with liberal democratic aspirations or pretensions, the media are expected to promote national citizenship and its emphasis on large-scale, assimilationist and territorially bounded belonging, while turning a blind eye to those who fall through the cracks as a result of racism and/or ethnicity. Little wonder that such an exclusionary articulation of citizenship is facing formidable challenges from its inherent contradictions and closures, and from an upsurge in the politics of recognition and representation by small-scale communities claiming autochthony at a historical juncture where the rhetoric espouses flexible mobility, postmodern flux and discontinuity." (Abstract)
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"This book seeks to address the complex and multi-faceted relationships between childhood, media, migration and globalisation. Our primary focus is on a specific group that has often been invisible or misrepresented in the debate: that is, migrant children. We are particularly concerned with childre
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n who have migrated in their own lifetimes – that is, first generation migrants – rather than the more established ‘ethnic minority’ communities that now exist in many parts of the world. In this respect, we are addressing an issue that is of considerable concern in contemporary public and political debate: it is an emotionally charged topic that raises challenging questions about social cohesion, nationhood, belonging and citizenship. Yet despite the intensity of these debates, the experiences and perspectives of children themselves are rarely brought to bear – except where they are portrayed as passive victims or (increasingly) as a threat. By contrast, we argue that children are often central actors in the process of migration. They are in the ‘front line’ as migrant families come to terms with their lives in their new location; and they are often the focus for parents’ fears and aspirations for the future and for the tension between cultural continuity and change. The media are frequently a crucial element in this process. Children in migrant families are likely to experience a wide range of media, from local, national, transnational and global sources." (Preface)
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