"This book explores how personalized content and the inherent networked nature of the mobile media could and do lead to positive externalities in social progress in Asian societies. Empirical studies that examine uses of the mobile phone and apps (voice mailing, SMS, mobile social media, mobile Weib
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o, mobile WeChat, etc.) are featured as a response to calls for theorization of the mobile media's efficacy as a tool for citizen engagement and participation in civic and political affairs, especially in the search for collective solutions to widespread social problems of food safety, pollution, government corruption, and public health risks. Considering the vast cultural diversity of Asian societies that are shaped by different levels of political, social, economic, and religious development, the book offers nuanced studies that provide in-depth analysis of the mobile media and political communication in a variety of communities of leading Asian countries. From the country-specific studies, broad themes and enduring concepts emerge." (Publisher description)
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"Some of the most remarkable impacts of digital media on political activism lie not in the new types of speech it provides to disorganized masses, but in the new types of listening it fosters among organized pressure groups. Beneath the easily visible waves of e-petitions, “likes,” hashtags, and
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viral videos lie a powerful undercurrent of activated public opinion. In this book, David Karpf offers a rich, detailed assessment of how political organizations carefully monitor this online activity and use it to develop new tactics and strategies that help them succeed in the evolving hybrid media system. Karpf discusses the power and potential of this new “analytic activism,” exploring the organizational logics and media logics that determine how digital inputs shape the choices that political campaigners make. He provides the first careful analysis of how organizations like Change.org and Upworthy.com influence the types of political narratives that dominate our Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter timelines. He investigates how MoveOn.org and its “netroots” peers use analytics to listen more effectively to their members and supporters. He also identifies two boundaries of analytic activism—the analytics floor and analytics frontier—which define the scope of this new style of organized citizen engagement. The book concludes by examining the limitations of analytic activism, raising a cautionary flag about the ways that putting too much faith in digital listening can lead to a weakening of civil society as a whole." (Publisher description)
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"Much has been made of the role of various media in the shaping of conflicts and political agendas in today's Arab world. This volume examines this topic with interdisciplinary contributions that range across media studies, anthroplogy, religious studies, and political science and explore both new a
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nd older media forms." (Publisher description)
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"Following the Arab Spring, the use of social media has become instrumental in organising activist movements and spreading political dissent in the Middle East. New online behaviours have transformed traditional communication channels, enabling young people of all backgrounds to feel politically emp
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owered. But now that spring has turned to winter, what are the long-term implications of internet activism in the region? Social Media in the Arab World provides a unique insight into the role of online communications as a force for change in the Gulf States. Featuring examples as diverse as neo-patrimonial politics in Saudi Arabia and the ways an online presence affects the status of women in Kuwait, the chapters examine shifts in the political, social and religious identities of citizens as a result of increased digital activism. With contributions from a variety of inter-disciplinary experts, this wide-ranging study examines the consequences of changing power dynamics brought about by popular social media." (Publisher description)
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"O livro é uma coletânea que reúne especialistas em Democracia Digital de diversas áreas (comunicação, administração, ciência política, sociologia etc.) para discutir questões conceituais e práticas que envolvem este campo. Temas como participação política e Internet, mídias sociais
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e engajamento político, cidadania online, transparência digital, consultas públicas e accountability são algumas das principais abordagens que constituem a obra. Tais temáticas, hoje fundamentais para se compreender a relação entre comunicação digital e democracias contemporâneas, são debatidas por pesquisadores atuantes nos principais grupos de pesquisas na área de diversas universidades brasileiras." (Contracapa)
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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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"The guide is designed to help human rights defenders working on human rights online navigate the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, with resources and case studies of real life advocacy to help inform and structure engagement. It also provides examples of how the UPR has been used for human r
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ights online, including examples of recommendations that states have accepted relating to the internet, sample civil society reports, advocacy documents, and tips on how to use the UPR to complement ongoing advocacy work." (https://www.gp-digital.org)
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"L’approfondissement des pratiques démocratiques dans les pays étudiés passe non seulement par le renforcement des capacités des médias et des journalistes, pour qu’ils puissent s’emparer pleinement des outils numériques, mais aussi par la montée en puissance d’un grand nombre de nouv
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eaux acteurs citoyens qui ont déjà montré, notamment lors de rendezvous électoraux, le rôle positif qu’ils pouvaient jouer. Les enjeux liés à la qualité et à la diversité de l’information disponible dans ces pays, à la transparence de l’action publique et à la redevabilité des institutions, sont intimement liés à l’existence d’un écosystème structuré qui englobe des journalistes, des blogueurs, des développeurs informatiques, des représentants d’administrations publiques, des spécialistes des données ou de la cartographie, des membres d’OSC ou d’ONG, etc. Accompagner ces acteurs citoyens d’Afrique dans le développement d’un espace public ouvert, pluriel, participatif et bien informé constitue aujourd’hui un défi à plusieurs dimensions : Contribuer à l’amélioration de l’accès à l’information (et donc, à l’accès à l’internet); Sensibiliser aux enjeux de la société numérique et de la participation citoyenne; Soutenir les acteurs de l’information et de la donnée au service du débat public; Structurer des réseaux nationaux/internationaux et d’éco-systèmes locaux d’acteurs citoyens; Développer une culture de la donnée publique ouverte et des usages que l’on peut en faire." (Conclusion, page 38)
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"This report presents the development, deployment, and evaluation of three counternarrative campaigns orchestrated by Against Violent Extremism (AVE) network and Jigsaw (an incubator within Alphabet that uses technology to address geopolitical issues) with additional in-kind and financial support fr
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om Facebook and Twitter. This project builds on the findings of a previous counter-narrative pilot project conducted in 2014 and attempts to find ways to achieve greater scale, authenticity, efficiency, reach, and impact. The key objectives of this project were to: Assist a wide geographic, ideological, and cultural variety of small non-profit organisations to develop and disseminate counter-narrative content to target audiences by utilising a variety of social media advertising tools; Analyse the strengths, weaknesses, and overall effectiveness of different social media platforms to facilitate reach and engagement among target audiences; and provide guidance to build the capacity of similar non-profit organisations to produce effective counter-narrative content in the future by creating ‘how-to’ videos and a counter-narrative ‘toolkit’. To achieve these objectives, AVE identified two pre-existing organisations and assisted them in the creation of counter-narrative content along with the development and execution of a target audience strategy. In the third example, AVE created a fronting organisation from scratch, building a brand through multiple accounts across multiple platforms in response to security concerns from the third party organisation [...] Our hypothesis was that a small amount of funding and guidance for counter-narrative campaigners, in terms of deploying social media advertising tools to reach ‘target audiences’, could dramatically improve the awareness, engagement and impact of counter-narratives and NGOs working in this space. The findings presented in this report support this hypothesis in a highly compelling way." (Executive summary, page 5-6)
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"The 45 country reports gathered here illustrate the link between the internet and economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). Some of the topics will be familiar to information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) activists: the right to health, education and culture; the socioec
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onomic empowerment of women using the internet; the inclusion of rural and indigenous communities in the information society; and the use of ICT to combat the marginalisation of local languages. Others deal with relatively new areas of exploration, such as using 3D printing technology to preserve cultural heritage, creating participatory community networks to capture an “inventory of things” that enables socioeconomic rights, crowdfunding rights, or the negative impact of algorithms on calculating social benefits. Workers’ rights receive some attention, as does the use of the internet during natural disasters. Ten thematic reports frame the country reports. These deal both with overarching concerns when it comes to ESCRs and the internet – such as institutional frameworks and policy considerations – as well as more specific issues that impact on our rights: the legal justification for online education resources, the plight of migrant domestic workers, the use of digital databases to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy, digital archiving, and the impact of multilateral trade deals on the international human rights framework. The reports highlight the institutional and country-level possibilities and challenges that civil society faces in using the internet to enable ESCRs. They also suggest that in a number of instances, individuals, groups and communities are using the internet to enact their socioeconomic and cultural rights in the face of disinterest, inaction or censure by the state." (Back cover)
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"In order to offer a more nuanced account of the relationship between online media and politics, this article proposes a theoretical framework that pays attention to discursive struggles, identifies strategies to contest hegemonic discourses, and employs a broadened notion of politics, referred to a
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s minimal politics. The framework is then used to analyze a corpus of Weibo (microblog) posts published by the charity organization, Love Save Pneumoconiosis (LSP). LSP activists use Weibo to campaign for medical treatment for workers with pneumoconiosis, and the article identifies two strategies of contestation in LSP activists' online activism. First, LSP activists articulate alternative discourses that challenge the hegemony of official discourses. Second, LSP activists' discourses are polyphonic expressions that legitimize the organization's work, while subtly politicizing the problem of pneumoconiosis. The strategies of contestation used by LSP activists exemplify how political contestation is possible in repressive contexts and illustrate the need to refine the theories used to study the political impact of online media." (Abstract)
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"Mit Blick auf die Rolle sozialer Netzwerkmedien in arabischen Gesellschaften lässt sich resümierend festhalten, dass durch deren vielfältige Nutzungsmöglichkeiten während Protestphasen und unter den restriktiven Bedingungen autoritärer Herrschaft übergreifende bürgerschaftliche Identitäten
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und protestorientierte Handlungsräume geschaffen werden können. Während einer Demokratisierung des politischen Systems, in der politische Strukturen neu- und umgebildet werden müssen, haben soziale Medien aber auch ein dysfunktionales Potential. Anstelle eines übergreifenden nationalen Dialogs werden vorhandene politische Polarisierungen verstärkt." (Fazit, Seite 72-73)
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"How is the adoption of digital media in the Arab world affecting the relationship between the state and its subjects? What new forms of online engagement and strategies of resistance have emerged from the aspirations of digitally empowered citizens? This book tells the compelling story of the concu
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rrent evolution of technology and society in the Middle East and North Africa region. It brings into focus the intricate relationship between Internet development, youth activism, cyber resistance, and political participation. Taking Tunisia—the birthplace of the Arab uprisings—as a case study, it offers an ethnographically nuanced and theoretically grounded analysis of the digital culture of contention that developed in an authoritarian context. It broadens the focus from narrow debates about the role that social media played in the Arab uprisings toward a fresh understanding of how changes in media affect existing power relations." (Publisher description)
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