"Very few cross-national studies have examined the consequences of electoral manipulation, including the manipulation of election administration and the media, on citizens’ trust in elections. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how autonomy of election management bodies (EMBs) and media fr
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eedom individually and conjointly shape citizens’ trust in elections. Citizens are more likely to express confidence in elections when EMBs display de facto autonomy and less likely to do so when mass media disseminate information independent of government control. Additionally, we suggest that EMB autonomy may not have a positive effect on public trust in elections if media freedom is low. Empirical findings based on recent survey data on public trust in elections in 47 countries and expert data on de facto EMB autonomy and media freedom support our hypotheses." (Abstract)
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"This book provides empirical analysis of the day-to-day use of online platforms by activists in Egypt and Kuwait. The research evaluates the importance of online platforms for effecting change and establishes a specific framework for doing so. Egypt and Kuwait were chosen because, since the mid-200
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0s, they have been the most prominent Arab countries in terms of online and offline activism. In the context of Kuwait, Jon Nordenson examines the oppositional youth groups who fought for a constitutional, democratic monarchy in the emirate. In Egypt, focus surrounds the groups and organizations working against sexual violence and sexual harassment. This book shows how and why online platforms are used by activists and identifies the crucial features of successful online campaigns. Egypt and Kuwait are revealed to be authoritarian contexts but where the challenges and possibilities faced by activists are quite different. The comparative nature of this research therefore exposes the context-specific usage of online platforms, separating this from the more general features of online activism. Nordenson demonstrates the power of online activism to create an essential 'counterpublic' that can challenge an authoritarian state and enable excluded groups to fight in ways that are far more difficult to suppress than a demonstration." (Publisher description)
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"The article discusses the significance of the past in the planning of media policies in two neighbouring countries in Africa, namely Kenya and Tanzania. The theoretical frame is composed of four concepts: social imaginary, collective memory, domestication, and liminality. The scrutiny starts from t
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he last years of colonialism and ends with the present-day situation with online media. In both countries, the basic media approach is still distinctly top-down and focuses on authorities—either the state or market elites. Kenya appears as a representative of continuity, while the media history of Tanzania is filled with jerky turns. However, the Tanzanian mediascape comes closer to the ordinary person, thanks to the use of Kiswahili and colloquial vocabulary, while the press in Kenya remains very elite oriented. The far more advanced Kenyan information and communications technology (ICT) situation does not change the situation much, because at the citizen level, the emphasis in ICT development is on services, not citizens’ voices. The shadow of the state is strong." (Abstract)
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"The report is based on a survey of more than 70,000 people in 36 markets, along with additional qualitative research, which together make it the most comprehensive ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world. A key focus remains in Europe where we have added Slovakia, Croatia, and Ro
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mania for the first time – but we have also added four markets in Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore) along with three additional Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, and Mexico) [...] In particular we have focused on two areas: (1) the extent to which people are prepared to pay for news or the different ways journalism might be funded in the future, and (2) understanding more about some of the drivers of low, and in some cases declining, trust in the media. For the first time we’ve attempted to measure and visualise relative levels of media polarisation across countries and identify a link between media polarisation and trust. Another focus has been on the media’s relationship with platforms – in particular how news is discovered and consumed within distributed environments such as social media, search, and online aggregators." (Foreword)
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"The Monitor assesses the risks to media pluralism based on a set of twenty indicators covering a broad notion of media pluralism that encompasses political, cultural, geographical, structural and content related dimensions. All types of media are covered: public service, commercial, community media
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, new media and online platforms. The risks for media pluralism are measured in four different areas: Basic Protection, Market Plurality, Political Independence and Social Inclusiveness. The indicators cover legal, economic and socio-political questions. National experts, composing the MPM network of local teams, provided the data to assess the levels of risk at country level, drafted the country reports, while the CMPF supervised and guaranteed quality and consistency of the data collection and assessed the levels of risk." (Executive summary)
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"This study analyzes ethical interpretations in the region’s investigative journalism community through a comparative analysis based on a survey conducted with journalists, journalism educators, and students from 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Our findings highlight the prevalence of a
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deontological perspective to ethics, with the majority of the respondents rejecting the use of soft-lies as investigative techniques. The study found, however, variability in ethical perspective within Latin America and Caribbean’s geo-cultural regions, with Central America and the Caribbean region leading in opposition and Brazil and the Southern Cone indicating more lenience toward controversial practices. When it comes to source-related controversial techniques, the journalism community in the region overwhelmingly rejects such practices." (Abstract)
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"A majority respect religious people but are divided on religion’s impact on the world and its importance for a “moral life” [...] Half of people around the world think that religion does more harm than good – but views vary greatly between some countries [...] Two in five people around the
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world say their religion defines them as a person – this is most true for Indians and South Africans [...] The majority in all countries feel “completely comfortable” being around people of different religions [...] Most countries are tolerant of people without religious beliefs – although more Indians report this as an issue compared to others [...] Only one third of countries think that religious people make “better” citizens – but this varies greatly between some countries, including India and Japan… but on average, countries are more split on whether or not religious practices are important to a “moral life”." (Pages 3-10)
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"While a few much-needed improvements can be reported for the 2017 Europe & Eurasia Media Sustainability Index (MSI), overall there are signs of continued and worsening challenges facing those who wish to create and support a vibrant information system in the 21 countries studied in this volume [...
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] Apart from Belarus, there is not much in the way of positive news in this year’s MSI. Taken together, only nine objective scores, scattered among six countries, showed any meaningful improvement: Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine experienced improvement in two objective scores while Bulgaria, Kosovo, and Uzbekistan each had one objective show improvement. Belarus was the only country whose overall score improved by a tenth of a point or more. Five other countries showed only marginal overall improvement." (Executive summary)
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"This study aims to investigate the reporting of major conflicts in Pakistan by two leading TV channels i.e. Geo TV and Dunya TV, to ascertain the nature of the coverage in terms of being escalatory or deescalatory. It aims to explore these conflicts from a peace journalism perspective. The conflict
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s include: the Taliban conflict, Balochistan conflict, sectarian conflict and ethno-political conflict in Karachi. The study is primarily a quantitative content analysis to explore the media coverage of conflicts during both high and low intensity periods from 2014 to 2015. The findings suggest that Pakistan news TV channels reported the Taliban and the ethno-political conflict in Karachi in an escalatory fashion, ridden in a de-contextualised pattern. While, on the other hand, the Balochistan and the sectarian conflict were mainly reported in de-escalatory terms owing to various socio-cultural reasons impacting the coverage. The findings are quite consistent with the existing literature on conflict journalism, which suggests that the media, in general, adopts a more propagandist and nationalistic stance, when the threats to national security are highest whereas it adopts a more humanistic stance, when the threats to national security are assumed to be low." (Abstract)
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"Matthias Kuhnert geht der Frage nach, wie zivilgesellschaftliche Gruppen bei der Bevölkerung um Unterstützung für ihre Tätigkeit warben. Am Beispiel zweier britischer NGOs, War on Want und Christian Aid, wird deutlich, welche Emotionen humanitäre Organisationen einsetzten, um ihre Botschaften
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zu vermitteln und Hilfsbereitschaft zu generieren. Durch den Vergleich christlicher und linker Organisationen kann der Autor zeigen, dass sich mit dem Wandel des Humanitarismus in der Nachkriegszeit nicht nur die Art und Weise humanitären und entwicklungspolitischen Engagements, sondern auch die emotionale Dimension humanitären Handelns veränderte. Zum ersten Mal liegt nun eine Untersuchung über die Transformation humanitären Engagements von der Nachkriegszeit bis Anfang der 1990er Jahre vor, die emotions- und wissensgeschichtliche Ansätze verbindet." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The central thesis of Crtl+Z is that a digital right to be forgotten is an innovative idea with a lot of possibilities and potential. The idea simply needs to be opened up, reframed, and restructured. The extreme options currently on the table limit the many ways to think about digital redemption a
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nd polarize regions. By utilizing new theories of privacy, breaking down the concept to organize its many meanings, and reframing the problem as one of information stewardship instead of information permanence, a host of choices become available for consideration. In order to make these difficult choices once they are on the table, the issues must be configured to fit within a digital discourse, existing legal cultures, and the international community. My approach to analyzing digital redemption is inherently comparative. The right to be forgotten is indisputably a European creation, but there is a great deal to be gained from studying digital redemption beyond European borders. The right to be forgotten sits at the intersection of change: change in national and transnational policy and change in everyday information technology practices, demands, and expectations. Situated in this unique position, the right to be forgotten encompasses many of the big questions surrounding information technologies and offers a particularly valuable site and moment for comparison of democratic information societies. Comparison among regional treatments of information technology should help us make sense of legal particularities and assumptions that otherwise go unnoticed." (Introduction, page 21)
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"This year we have evidence of the growth of distributed (offsite) news consumption, a sharpening move to mobile and we can reveal the full extent of ad-blocking worldwide. These three trends in combination are putting further severe pressure on the business models of both traditional publishers and
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new digital-born players – as well as changing the way in which news is packaged and distributed." (Overview & key findings)
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"This paper explores how Egyptian, Kenyan, Serbian and South African civil society organisations (CSOs) use communication and relationships with media to engage in democratic contestation. Individual interviews were conducted with 91 CSO members who participated in the various democratisation confli
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cts listed in MeCoDEM’s research design [...] The study found that key sources of conflict identified by the interviewees included group identity (e.g. religious and ethnic identity) and contestations around notions of citizenship. Interviewees also identified the distribution and control of power was another key source of conflict - Egyptian, Serbian and South African activists all placed significant importance on networked civil society. Thus, communications among members and with the outside world was key to redistributing power. However, Kenya’s CSOs saw their power as stemming from the ability to build healthy relationships between different groups of people, and so the primary communication activities centred on citizen education. Egyptian, Kenyan and Serbian activists viewed regular elections as a key marker of democracy, and the media was correct to focus on such issues. But South African activists suggested that the media focussed too much attention on elections, and not enough given to local participatory mechanisms of listening to citizens." (Executive summary)
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"These are the latest findings from the Ipsos Perils of Perception survey. The results highlight how wrong people across 40 countries are about some key issues and features of the population in their country. Perceptions are not reality… Nearly all countries overestimate their Muslim population, a
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nd many are extraordinarily wrong [...] Nearly every country thinks their Muslim population will grow much more than is projected [...] Every country thinks people are much less happy than they say they are [...] People are often very wrong on how acceptable their fellow citizens find homosexuality [...] Countries are also often very wrong on how acceptable people find sex before marriage [...] (Slides 2-12)
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"The current study explores the influence of communication variables on human rights protection. The effects of international and domestic mass communication and digital media were assessed among global social, economic, and political factors. The statistical analyses on a sample of 101 nation state
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s over the most recent decade reveal several important findings: (a) top-down, internationally initiated human rights discourse and monitoring were not as effective as bottom-up, domestically initiated human rights dialogues; (b) access to the Internet and access to a mobile phone have different effects on human rights performance, and Internet availability played an especially important role; (c) economic development, political system, and population size are powerful predictors of nations' human rights performance, but a large population size diminishes the effect of economic development; and (d) economic development can moderate the effect of political context on human rights performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed." (Abstract)
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"The book aims to situate the cultural, social and, in some cases, transnational context of ICT appropriation and virtual connectivity so as to reposition Africans from various countries and contexts as active agents of social change. The intricacies of local ICT use and the dynamics of mobility in
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the African context enables us to better understand material cultures, relationships between people, new media and social networking. Equally explored in relation to ICTs are the social and spatial dynamics of communication, association and belonging across spaces – particularly physical borders, social boundaries and confines and possibilities informed by the habitus of bodies and practices." (Publisher description)
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"While acknowledging the significant contributions of the public service broadcasting heritage in the Global North in efforts to establish such provision in the Global South, the contributors explain why simple imitation is unlikely to ever work well enough across such a diverse range of countries a
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nd regions with crucial differences in their histories, languages, cultures and experiences." (Publisher description)
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"The Internet in Africa has become an increasingly contested space, where competing ideas of development and society battle for hegemony. By comparing the evolution of the Internet in Ethiopia and Rwanda, we question whether policies and projects emerging from two of Africa’s fastest growing, but
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also most tightly controlled countries, can be understood as part of a relatively cohesive model of the ‘developmental’ Internet, which challenges mainstream conceptions. Our answer is a qualified yes. Ethiopia and Rwanda have shared an overarching strategy which places the state as the prime mover in the development of Internet policy and large-scale ICT projects. Rwanda, however, appears to have developed a more open model which can accommodate a greater variety of actors and opinions, and incorporate them within a relatively coherent vision that emanates from the centre. Ethiopia, in contrast, has developed a more closed model, where all powers rest firmly in the hands of a government that has refused (so far) to entertain and engage with alternative ideas of the Internet. In the case of Rwanda, we argue, this approach reflects broader strategies adopted by the government in the economic domain but appears to counter the prevailing political approach of the government, allowing for a greater degree of freedom on the Internet as compared to traditional media. While in the case of Ethiopia, the opposite is true; Ethiopia’s Internet policies appear to run counter to prevailing economic policies but fit tightly with the government’s approach to politics and governance." (Abstract)
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