mediadev library

Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa

Nicole Stremlau

New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (2018), xiii, 175 pp.

"Countries emerging from violent conflict face difficult challenges about what the role of media should be in political transitions, particularly when attempting to build a new state and balance a difficult legacy. Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa discusses how ideas, institutions and intere ... more

Online Activism in Politically Restricted Central Asia: A Comparative Review of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan

Bahtiyar Kurambayev

In: Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change

Jan Servaes (ed.)

Singapore: Springer (2018), pp. 961-976

"This comparative study examined the Internet’s role and wider social media in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, three Central Asian countries in the democratization process. Specifically, this work aims to discuss how the Internet and social media are allowing Internet users wider opportuni ... more

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Measuring the Reach of 'Fake News' and Online Disinformation in Europe

Richard Fletcher, Alessio Cornia, Lucas Graves, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2018), 10 pp.

"The purpose of this RISJ factsheet is to provide toplevel usage statistics for the most popular sites that independent fact-checkers and other observers have identified as publishers of false news and online disinformation in two European countries: France and Italy. We focus specifically on sites ... that independent fact-checkers have shown to publish demonstrably false news and information, whether for profit or for ideological/political purposes. This constitutes a more clearly defined subset of a wider range of issues sometimes discussed using the broad, vague, and politicized term “fake news”. We examine France and Italy as two particularly important cases, as both are widely seen as facing serious issues with forprofit and ideologically/politically motivated online disinformation. Based on a starting sample of around 300 websites in each country that independent fact-checkers have identified as publishers of false news (which, on this basis, we refer to as “false news sites”), we focus on measuring these sites’ reach, attention, and number of interactions on Facebook. We provide context by comparing these figures with equivalent data for a small selection of the most widely-used French and Italian news brands. We find that: • None of the false news websites we considered had an average monthly reach of over 3.5% in 2017, with most reaching less than 1% of the online population in both France and Italy. By comparison, the most popular news websites in France (Le Figaro) and Italy (La Repubblica) had an average monthly reach of 22.3% and 50.9%, respectively; • The total time spent with false news websites each month is lower than the time spent with news websites. The most popular false news websites in France were viewed for around 10 million minutes per month, and for 7.5 million minutes in Italy. People spent an average of 178 million minutes per month with Le Monde, and 443 million minutes with La Repubblica—more than the combined time spent with all 20 false news sites in each sample; • Despite clear differences in terms of website access, the level of Facebook interaction (defined as the total number of comments, shares, and reactions) generated by a small number of false news outlets matched or exceeded that produced by the most popular news brands. In France, one false news outlet generated an average of over 11 million interactions per month—five times greater than more established news brands. However, in most cases, in both France and Italy, false news outlets do not generate as many interactions as established news brands." (Pages 1-2) more

Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction Obitel 2018: Ibero-American TV Fiction on Video on Demand Platforms
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Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes, Guillermo Orozco Gómez (eds.)

Porto Alegre: Sulina;Globo Comunicação e Participações (2018), 410 pp.

"This Yearbook is divided into three parts. The first is an introduction chapter, containing a comparative synthesis of fiction in the Obitel countries. This comparison is made from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, which makes possible to observe the development of fiction in each count ... ry, highlighting their main productions, as well as the theme of the year. The second part consists in 11 chapters, one for each country, with an internal structure of fixed topics, but with new additions every year. The sections that compound each chapter are the following: 1) Country’s audiovisual context: this section presents general information about the audiovisual sector regarding the production of television fiction, such as history, trends and relevant events. 2) Analysis of premiere fictions: it is made through quantitative tables that show specific data about national and Ibero-American TV fictions released in each country. In this section the ten most watched titles of the year are highlighted. Since 2017, the Yearbook also brings the five most watched national productions of the year in an effort to enhance and deepen the issue of national identities in each country. 3) Transmedia reception: this section presents and exemplifies what channels offer to the audience fiction on the internet, as well the description of the audience’s behavior when watching, consuming and interacting with their fictions through websites, social networks and other platforms. 4) Highlights of the year: the most important productions not only in terms of audience (rating), but also for their sociocultural impact and for generating innovation in television fiction production or reception. 5) Theme of the year, which this year is Ibero-American TV fiction on video on demand platforms. This theme converges with the interests of Obitel, which for years has been following the trajectory of Ibero-American television fiction by rapidly changing scenarios. Multiple screens, transmissions, new formats, pay TV, UGC, among other topics, have been monitored and analyzed theoretically by each Obitel country research group. In this Yearbook, the proposal is to discuss production on video on demand platforms (VoD), addressing new forms of distribution and consumption. The objective was to verify the panorama of VoD production and consumption in the Obitel countries and the presence of national fiction on these platforms. In order to do so, we attempted to identify the reconfigurations that are occurring in the television scenario of each country in the face of new platforms of production, distribution and audiovisual consumption. Such reconfigurations take place from production to reception, from narrative forms to business models, to debates on legislation and regulation." (Pages 21-22) more

Promoting the Digital Transformation of African Portuguese-Speaking Countries and Timor-Leste

Paris: OECD (2018), 132 pp.

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Small is Beautiful? The Salience of Scale and Power to Three European Cultures of TV Production

Ruth McElroy, Jakob Isak Nielsen, Caitriona Noonan

Critical Studies in Television, volume 13, issue 2 (2018), pp. 169-187

"As television production becomes increasingly global, television studies must advance its understanding of how the global and the local intersect and impact upon the cultures of production. Drawing on original comparative research of three small European nations – Denmark, Ireland and Wales – t ... more

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Media Sustainability Index 2018: The Development of Sustainable Independent Media in Europe and Eurasia

Linda Trail (ed.)

Washington, DC: IREX (2018), xx, 314 pp.

"Macedonia and Montenegro saw the largest overall score increases this year, in comparison to 2017. The improvement across all objectives this year for Macedonia’s media sector can be attributed to political changes that prioritize media in democratic reforms. Although Montenegro’s score improve ... more

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Digital News Report 2018

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, David A. L. Levy, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2018), 143 pp.

"The use of social media for news has started to fall in a number of key markets after years of continuous growth. Usage is down six percentage points in the United States, and is also down in the UK and France. Almost all of this is due to a specific decline in the discovery, posting, and sharing o ... more

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La comunicación digital de la fe religiosa en la sociedad del espectáculo: Abordaje comparativo entre Brasil y Colombia

Óscar Augusto Elizalde Prada

Porto Alegre: Pontificia Universidad Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Doctoral Thesis (2018), 327 pp.

"Esta investigación aborda el papel de la comunicación digital en la configuración de la fe religiosa, en un contexto cultural predominantemente mediático que, a través de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación, podría estar acelerando el apogeo de La sociedad del esp ... more

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Media Reforms and Democratization in Emerging Democracies of Sub-Saharan Africa

Ufuoma Akpojivi

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), 186 pp.

"This book examines the media reform processes and re-democratization projects of Ghana and Nigeria’s emerging democracies. It evaluates and critiques these reform processes, arguing that because of dependency approaches resulting from the transplanting of policy framework from the West into these ... more

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How Violence Shapes Religion: Belief and Conflict in the Middle East and Africa

Ziya Meral

Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press (2018), x, 217 pp.

"Is there an inevitable global violent clash unfolding between the world's largest religions: Islam and Christianity? Do religions cause violent conflicts, or are there other factors at play? How can we make sense of increasing reports of violence between Christian and Muslim ethnic communities acro ... more

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The Age Gap in Religion Around the World: By Several Measures, Young Adults Tend to be Less Religious Than Their Elders

Pew Research Center (2018), 96 pp.

"Although the age gap in religious commitment is larger in some nations than in others, it occurs in many different economic and social contexts – in developing countries as well as advanced industrial economies, in Muslim-majority nations as well as predominantly Christian states, and in societie ... more

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Media, Diaspora and Conflict
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Ola Ogunyemi (ed.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2017), xxiii, 240 pp.

"This edited collection argues that the connective and orientation roles ascribed to diasporic media overlook the wider roles they perform in reporting intractable conflicts in the Homeland. Considering the impacts of conflict on migration in the past decades, it is important to understand the capac ... more

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Expanding Influences Research to Insecure Democracies: How Violence, Public Insecurity, Economic Inequality and Uneven Democratic Performance Shape Journalists’ Perceived Work Environments

Sallie Hughes et al.

Journalism Studies, volume 18, issue 5 (2017), pp. 645-665

"Democracies with sharp violence and public insecurity have proliferated in recent decades, with many also featuring extreme economic inequality. These conditions have not been explicitly considered in comparative research on journalists’ work environments, an omission that may obscure important r ... more

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Media in Third-Wave Democracies: Southern and Central/Eastern Europe in a Comparative Perspective

Péter Bajomi-Lázár (ed.)

Paris; Budapest: L'Harmattan (2017), 238 pp.

"The media and political systems of former communist countries in Central/Eastern Europe share a number of similarities with those in Southern Europe. According to Karol Jakubowicz, these similarities also include late democratisation, a weak middle class, marked social and economic differences, a s ... more

Changes in Journalism in Two Post-Authoritarian Non-Western Countries

Levi Obijiofor, Richard Murray, Shailendra B. Singh

International Communication Gazette, volume 79, issue 4 (2017), pp. 379-399

"There have been significant changes in journalistic practices in various countries over the years. Yet little is known about the nature of changes in journalism in transitional developing countries following military rule. Drawing on email surveys of journalists in Nigeria and Fiji, two countries w ... more

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Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression: Comparative, Theoretical and Historical Reflections After the Charlie Hebdo Massacre

Jeroen Temperman, András Koltay (eds.)

Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press (2017), xix, 740 pp.

"The tension between blasphemy laws and the freedom of expression in modern times is a key area of debate within legal academia and beyond. With contributions by leading scholars, this volume compares blasphemy laws within a number of Western liberal democracies and debates the legitimacy of these l ... more

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Defending Journalism: How National Mechanisms Can Protect Journalists and Address the Issue of Impunity. A Comparative Analysis of Practices in Seven Countries
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Elisabeth Witchel, Esben Q. Harboe (eds.)

International Media Support (IMS) (2017), 250 pp.

"The research documents how, despite immense ongoing challenges, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nepal and Pakistan, some important advances have been made to develop joint structures and innovative approaches to defend the practice of journalism. It examines the long road Colombia has followed in the establi ... more

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