"This book documents the journalistic career of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Known as the Mahatma and the Father of India, Gandhi was also a journalist. However, he was a not a journalist in the same vein as those working for the New York Times or the BBC. Rather, Gandhi was what is called an advocacy journa
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list; that is, his journalism served various political, social, and cultural causes—most importantly, in the long run, the Indian independence movement. Among the other key causes were equality, human rights, Muslim-Hindu relations, vegetarianism, chastity, poverty, and hygiene. The chapters in this book were written by authors who attended a conference on Gandhi and media at the University of St. Andrews on the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s birthday, in October 2019. It relies on careful analysis of his newspapers, produced in both South Africa and India, including Indian Opinion, Young India, the Gujarati newspaper Navajivan, and three versions of Harijan, which were in English, Gujarati, and Hindi. The authors also place Gandhi’s version of journalism in a historical context of small, family-operated weekly newspapers that were commonplace in the nineteenth century. Finally, the book looks at other media tools Gandhi used to transmit his messages to the public, including his recorded voice for gramophone." (Publisher description)
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"The report shows that 2022 will be a year of careful consolidation for a news industry that has been both disrupted and galvanised by the drawn-out COVID-19 crisis. Both journalists and audiences have, to some degree, been 'burnt out' by the relentless intensity of the news agenda, alongside increa
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singly polarised debates about politics, identity, and culture. This could be the year when journalism takes a breath, focuses on the basics, and comes back stronger. In many parts of the world, audiences for news media have been falling throughout 2021 - not an ideal situation at a time when accurate and reliable information has been so critical to people's health and security. A key challenge for the news media this year is to re-engage those who have turned away from news - as well as to build deeper relationships with more regular news consumers." (Executive summary, page 5)
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"[...] the past sixty years have seen a rise of journalistic practices that purport to cover the news beyond the typical problem-based narrative. These genres of journalistic reporting are not positive news or fluff reporting: They are rigorous reporting philosophies and practices that share a commo
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n goal—reporting beyond the problem-based narrative, thereby exemplifying a commitment to the social responsibility theory of the press, which asserts that journalists have a duty to consider society’s best interests. However, there is little academic or professional understanding of these journalistic approaches. As such, this book provides an in-depth examination of socially-responsible news reporting practices, such as constructive journalism, solutions journalism, and peace journalism. Each chapter focuses on one reporting form, defining it and detailing its evolution and status among scholars and practitioners, as well as discussing its known effects and future direction. This edited volume is the first academic book published on these forms of reporting in the United States. It provides a comprehensive resource that explores the theoretical underpinnings of these journalistic genres that grounds these approaches and allows for a coherent line of research to follow as these approaches evolve." (Publisher description)
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"Humanitarian journalism can be defined, very broadly, as the production of factual accounts about crises and issues that affect human welfare. This can be broken down into two broad approaches: “traditional” reporting about humanitarian crises and issues, and advocacy journalism that aims to im
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prove humanitarian outcomes. In practice, there is overlap between the two approaches. Mainstream journalists have long helped to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian crises, as well as provide early emergency warnings and monitor the treatment of citizens. Meanwhile, aid agencies and humanitarian campaigners frequently subsidize or directly provide journalistic content. There is a large research literature on humanitarian journalism. The most common focus of this research is the content of international reporting about humanitarian crises. These studies show that a small number of “high-profile” crises take up the vast majority of news coverage, leaving others marginalized and hidden. The quantity of coverage is not strongly correlated to the severity of a crisis or the number of people affected but, rather, its geopolitical significance and cultural proximity to the audience. Humanitarian journalism also tends to highlight international rescue efforts, fails to provide context about the causes of a crisis, and operates to erase the agency of local response teams and victims. Communication theorists have argued that this reporting prevents an empathetic and equal encounter between the audience and those affected by distant suffering. However, there are few empirical studies of the mechanisms through which news content influences audiences or policymakers. There are also very few production studies of the news organizations and journalists who produce humanitarian journalism. The research that does exist focuses heavily on news organizations based in the Global North/West." (Summary)
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"Inspired by the research agenda set out by Fazey et al. (2018) for climate researchers mentioned earlier, one can argue that the most critical question for journalism is no longer about solely informing about the problem of climate change, but about engaging in the how-to of transformative changes
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necessary to avoid catastrophic man-made climate change. The Guardian’s 'Keep it in the ground' campaign is one way of tackling this challenge. Yet engagement can be done in several ways. While the campaign makes a powerful case for journalism to engage more in a reciprocal dialogue with the public, adhering to its core value of public trust, but also because a newspaper needs an engaged public to survive - it also makes the case for sticking to what journalism knows best: newsrooms are not set up to campaign like a campaigning organisation. Yet there should be room for experimentation and various ways of doing journalism, especially in a time where new solutions and models are in demand as the old ones crumble." (Conclusion)
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"This chapter reviews historical and contemporary advocacy journalism in a global context, and identifies future directions for research. The intention is not to offer a comprehensive survey, a rather ambitious scope given the diversity of journalistic practices worldwide, but rather to review conce
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ptual definitions and historical developments to locate advocacy journalism as a specific form of journalistic practice." (Abstract)
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"This volume grew out of the Why We Write conference held at Columbia University in the spring of 2003. The conference was the second part of a series of conferences organized by graduate students in the history department that explored issues related to history, social change, and the politics of w
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riting. The proceedings from the first conference were published as Taking Back the Academy: History of Activism, History as Activism (Routledge, 2004). The Why We Write conference drew participants from across disciplines and academic fields and also included, among others, filmmakers, journalists, playwrights, novelists, and poets from in and beyond the United States. The focus of the conference was to examine writing, broadly defined. As such the panels ranged from historical discussions on print culture and the use of theory in U.S. history to roundtable discussions on gender and sexuality to workshops on teaching writing and publishing one’s research." (Acknowledgements, page vii)
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