"A total of 4,094 news stories were collected and analysed across 12 selected media outlets for a period of one month, from 2 January 2023 to 31 January 2023, by trained monitors. This study revealed a grim picture of women’s under-representation and misrepresentation in Cambodian news. This is a
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call to action for media owners and managers, senior editors, journalists, journalist associations to be intentional about women’s presence and portrayal in the news, to report the news from women’s perspectives and to regard women in news as an everyday topic rather than a marginalised topic. It is also a call to action to the Royal Government of Cambodia to support the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to monitor women’s presence and portrayal in news and in media outlets and to call out breaches to the Joint Prakas On Media Code of Conduct for Reporting on Violence Against Women, and to redress the gender imbalance of government spokespeople across all Ministries. This study did not extend to examining the impact on society of women being under-represented and misrepresented in news. Nevertheless, we do know that news media help shape public discourse and who or what is selected to appear in the news and how individuals are portrayed can influence people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours (Flood & Pease, 2009).
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"In order to spread Russian narratives about Ukraine that create a false impression of the country among external and internal audiences, the Russian Federation uses a whole complex of information and communication channels. Their main task is to replace the target audience's existing ideas about th
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e real, factual state of affairs with ideas that are considered to be more beneficial to the aggressor country. Russia rejects democratic principles and Ukraine's desire for a European future. Depending on the tasks and results (successes/failures) of operations to influence the internal politics of Ukraine and the formation of its image among the Western audience, Russian narratives changed from a presentation of Ukrainians and Russians as “brotherly” peoples or even one people to the importance of the complete extermination of "Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis," denial of the very existence of Ukrainians as a distinct ethnic group (thereby “justifying” genocide), returning supposed "historical territories of Russia," and promoting the idea that Ukraine has never really been a proper state or is a historic mistake. The narratives of Russian propaganda intertwine, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes contradicting each other. But whatever the Russian narrative may be, its main goal is to undermine Ukraine’s democratic development and its integration into the Western world, to weaken the desire of Ukrainians to determine their future outside Russian influence, within the European family, as well as to weaken international support for Ukraine. The Kremlin's disinformation campaign led to the emergence of a number of stereotypes that influenced the decision-making of Ukraine's partners at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, which led to numerous human casualties, the destruction of Ukrainian economy and infrastructure, and a real threat to the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Fortunately, Ukraine has persevered. Unbreakable people of an unbreakable country continues its fight not only for itself but the whole democratic world." (Summary)
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"1. Expansive reach and influence of WhatsApp groups: The study findings indicate that WhatsApp groups have a remarkably wide reach, potentially connecting with three quarters of WhatsApp users in Lebanon. These groups are part of larger networks, which enhances the dissemination of content. Moreove
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r, their cost-effectiveness for advertising, compared to platforms like Facebook, makes them a formidable tool for targeted information dissemination. 2. Dominant themes and regional variation in conversations: The analysis revealed that conversations in the 37 sampled groups revolved mainly around key themes such as livelihood, security, politics, and foreign countries’ involvement in Lebanon. Interestingly, there were regional variations in the content promoted and more specifically in fear-oriented news, reflecting the different concerns prevalent in various areas. 3. Sensationalism, speculation, and fearmongering: WhatsApp groups frequently employ sensationalized language, unverified speculations, and a focus on dramatic events. These practices contribute to an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty among the public, potentially influencing behaviors, including purchasing trends and political opinion-shaping. 4. Mis- and disinformation: The study highlighted the pervasive spread of false or misleading information, particularly during sensitive periods, where it can be used to exploit or manipulate public sentiment. Notable examples include unreliable earthquake predictions and the case of Sheikh Al Rifai’s murder." (Conclusion, page 38)
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"[...] Este relatório apresenta uma síntese das principais narrativas monitoradas pela Casa Galilei em perfis de redes sociais, no período de 25 de Setembro a 30 de Outubro, portanto o período da realização desta primeira sessão. Utilizando palavras-chaves relacionadas ao Sínodo, nos debruç
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amos sobre postagens em redes sociais para identificar e analisar as principais estratégias discursivas de influenciadores, lideranças religiosas e políticas, grupos e instituições católicas no Facebook, Instagram e YouTube, páginas e canais que produzem conteúdos sobre catolicismo, que abordaram a agenda sinodal. Apesar de encontrar eco em muitas comunidades, bispos, sacerdotes, religiosas/os, leigas/os e organizações católicas, nossas análises indicam que existem movimentos fortes de resistência ao Sínodo, com capacidade para mobilizar pessoas, paróquias e comunidades para oposição radical a qualquer reforma proposta pelo Sínodo ou pelo Papa Francisco. Por outro lado, percebemos que existe uma percepção na sociedade civil, na imprensa e em outras instâncias, de que o Sínodo é apenas um evento interno da Igreja Católica, quando na verdade os debates podem ter influência profunda em questões sociopolíticas, ambientais e culturais do conjunto da sociedade. Temas como racismo, xenofobia, desigualdade, violência sexual, violência contra as mulheres, a pobreza e as mudanças climáticas foram debatidos pelos participantes e estão apresentadas no Relatório Síntese da primeira sessão do Sínodo. Nesse sentido, fortalecer o processo sinodal e construir outras narrativas para mobilizar as comunidades católicas é uma oportunidade de ampliar a participação e a presença de comunidades católicas no fortalecimento da democracia, da promoção de direitos humanos e justiça socioambiental." (Apresentação, paginas 5-6)
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"This is a summarised report of a study on Ugandan news media coverage of road safety, focusing on the country’s three main daily newspapers, three television stations and two online platforms. The study explored the attention and the nature of coverage these newspapers, television stations and on
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line platforms paid to road safety from 1 March 2023 to 31 November 2023. The publications studied were Bukedde (a Luganda-language daily), Daily Monitor, and New Vision (the only two English-language dailies). The television stations were NBS, NTV Uganda, and UBC while the online platforms were ChimpReports and Uganda Radio Network (URN) [...] Between March and November 2023, a combined total of 766 articles related to road safety were identified across the three media types monitored. Newspapers produced the highest volume of stories followed by television. When considering all media platforms, there’s a varied landscape with no single platform dominating the coverage. This underscores the importance of a multi-channel approach to road safety advocacy, information and other interventions." (Page 3)
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"Die Medienberichterstattung über Geflüchtete wird von einem großen Teil der deutschen Bevölkerung als einseitig wahrgenommen. Inhaltsanalysen zeigen allerdings sehr unterschiedliche Befunde: Während einige Studien eine einseitig positive Berichterstattung konstatieren, kommen andere zu dem Erg
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ebnis, die Berichterstattung sei einseitig negativ. Dabei handelt es sich jedoch meist um Querschnittstudien im Zusammenhang mit besonders spektakulären Ereignissen von unterschiedlicher Valenz. Zudem werden oft nur wenige Medien und wenige Indikatoren für Einseitigkeit betrachtet. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht deshalb erstmals die Berichterstattung von sechs deutschen Leitmedien über Geflüchtete in einem Zeitraum von fast sechs Jahren (Mai 2015 bis Dezember 2020) anhand verschiedener Indikatoren für Einseitigkeit. Eine manuelle Inhaltsanalyse von 8185 Medienbeiträgen zeigt, dass insgesamt zwei konfligierende Narrative die Berichterstattung dominierten: Geflüchtete wurden als Menschen in Not charakterisiert, die aus humanitären Gründen aufgenommen werden müssen, und gleichzeitig als Sicherheitsrisiko für die deutsche Bevölkerung beschrieben. Im Zeitverlauf zeigten sich ereignisabhängig erhebliche Schwankungen in Menge und Tendenz der Berichterstattung. Zugleich war aber auch ein Trend zu weniger und negativerer Berichterstattung erkennbar. Ursachen und vermutliche Folgen dieser Berichterstattungsmuster werden im Beitrag diskutiert." (Abstract)
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"This paper offers some insights into Twitter as a political field, based on Bourdieu’s field theory. Networked publics, as agents of this field, are competing overpower by performing networked practices. To investigate this field, we focused on two networked practices: networked framing and narra
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ting. Persian Twitter in 2017 presidential election provides a good context to analyze how such a field is constituted. Combining a social-network analytic approach with discursive and textual interpretations, we analyzed a corpus of 2,596,284 tweets. We identified three main networked publics in the retweet network: reformists, conservatives, and diaspora users. Having identified the most influential users in each community based on PageRank metric, we thoroughly investigated all of their tweets. The results show that ordinary users constituted the major population of conservative and diaspora publics. The reformist community included mostly journalists and to a lesser extent media. Findings also confirm that all networked publics used the same strategies to gain more power in the field. They produced quite the same frames and narratives to compete with each other. Moreover, the battle was more about the routine and electoral debates, not the legitimacy or entity of regime. Hence, none of the networked publics challenged the hegemonic discourse in Iran significantly." (Abstract)
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"Patterns of news consumption are changing drastically. Citizens increasingly rely on social media such as Facebook to read and share political news. With the power of these platforms to expose citizens to political information, the implications for democracy are profound, making understanding what
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is shared duringelections a priority on the research agenda. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no study has yet explicitly explored how elections transform news sharing behaviour on Facebook. This study begins to remedy this by (a) investigating changes in news coverage and news sharing behaviour on Facebook by comparing election and routine periods, and by (b) addressing the ‘news gap’ between preferences of journalists and news consumers on social media. Employing a novel data set of news articles (N = 83,054) in Mexico, findings show that during periods of heightened political activity, both the publication and dissemination of political news increases, the gap between the news choices of journalists and consumers narrows, and that news sharing resembles a zero-sum game, with increased political news sharing leading to a decrease in the sharing of other news." (Abstract)
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"The purpose of this report is to trace and detect gendered disinformation, a concerning trend in the dissemination of news and information through social and online media platforms. Disproportionate targeting based on gender and sexual orientation, especially those in the public eye like politician
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s, is a common phenomenon of disinformation campaigns and online violence. The effects of such campaigns are to damage the credibility of women leaders, potentially influencing public perception and election outcomes. Online violence and harassment, marked by sexist and misogynistic comments, are more prevalent for women and LGBTQI+ persons, particularly on social media, and may negatively affect their mental well-being. Gendered disinformation and online violence have contributed to political polarization, fostering a hostile online environment that can discourage women and other marginalized groups from actively participating in civic life." (Summary)
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"This article investigates how all the main quality and tabloid newspapers and the television newscasts of the main broadcasters in Czechia and Slovakia framed immigrants, what the tone of the employed frames was, and who the main framing actors were before and during the EU refugee crisis (2013–2
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016). Using quantitative content analysis (N = 7,910), we show that security and cultural frames are most commonly employed while the victimization frame is much less common. Whereas tabloids use the security and cultural frames more often, the victimization, economic and administrative frames are more often invoked in quality media. We also show that the framing of immigrants is predominantly negative, and that the security and cultural are the most negatively valenced frames. Finally, we document a dominance of political actors and the practical invisibility of immigrants and refugees in the media coverage." (Abstract)
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"Uma campanha anti-imprensa permanente força e acelera a perda de credibilidade da mídia profissional. Os ataques são orquestrados e contam com um ecossistema de desinformação bem estruturado e auto-sustentável. A campanha é financiada por políticos de pequena expressão e veículos de junk.
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news. Sistemas de recomendação favorecem veículos que reforçam o modelo de negócios da plataforma, independente da qualidade do conteúdo." (Diagnóstico geral, 56)
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"El libro “Pluralismo TV. Medición y análisis del pluralismo en la televisión chilena” busca contribuir al debate sobre el pluralismo mediático, revisando el marco jurídico nacional, proponiendo una operacionalización de la medición del pluralismo informativo en la televisión y discutien
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do los resultados de su aplicación. Se incluyen, también, recomendaciones para la implementación de las obligaciones legales sobre pluralismo y su traducción en políticas públicas que permitan una mayor democratización de la pantalla y de la industria televisiva. Esta obra es resultado de un trabajo interdisciplinario que surge de la intersección entre comunicaciones, las ciencias sociales y el derecho, abordando distintas facetas del problema: teórica, política, regulatoria, metodológica y empírica." (Descripción de la casa editorial)
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"Journalists are increasingly attacked in response to their work yet they often lack the necessary support and training to protect themselves, their sources, and their communications. Despite this, there has been limited scholarly attention that addresses how journalism schools approach digital secu
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rity education. This paper draws from an analysis of 106 US programs and 23 semi-structured interviews with journalism students and professors to examine how the next generation of journalists learn about digital security practices. Our findings show that most programs (88.7%) don’t offer formal digital security programming and that digital security skills are often deprioritized in favor of skills seen as more significant contributors to post-graduate hiring—a key priority of journalism programs. Additional barriers include a lack of space and time in existing curricula for added digital security coursework, a perception that students are not interested, and few professors with related knowledge. When security education is introduced, it’s done so in often informal and ad-hoc ways, largely led by “security champions,” both within and outside of journalism, who advocate for its legitimacy. These findings have important implications for journalism education and journalists’ capacity to carry out their work amidst a deteriorating safety environment in the United States." (Abstract)
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"Holding the greatest area of rainforest in the world, Brazil has seen the adoption of a far-right anti-environmental agenda under the administration of Jair Bolsonaro. This agenda was backed by a transnational infrastructure of right-wing media outlets on online platforms, including the conservativ
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e YouTube channel Brasil Paralelo. Our research attempted to understand how environmental conspiracies in Brasil Paralelo’s documentary Cortina de Fumaça (in English, smokescreen) took advantage of both digital platform affordances and political alignment with the far-right government to gain social adherence and relevance. By carrying out topic modeling on more than 13,000 comments and network analysis of 982 recommended videos on YouTube, we aimed to analyze the following: (1) which narratives fostered in the documentary have reverberated among the audience that published comments on its YouTube page and (2) what type of video does YouTube recommend for users who watched Cortina de Fumaça. Our results show that far-right anti-environmental discourse is instrumentalized as yet another component of modern culture wars, where environmental conspiracies are placed side by side with other conspiratorial claims regarding politics, gender, religion, and other ideological subjects." (Abstract)
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"The Russian war against Ukraine illustrates how the disinformation ecosystem works in Hungary, and it also reveals its devastating impact on democratic public discourse. Public service media play a prominent role in spreading disinformation. We were able to identify several false narratives in the
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period of the first year since the start of the war. In the first few months of the war, a key element of disinformation that was being spread in Hungary suggested that Ukraine had provoked the armed conflict. Later, the prevailing message was that only Hungary wanted peace, while the Western powers were interested in a continuation of the war. During autumn, the focus of the disinformation campaign increasingly shifted to the EU, disseminating an anti-EU message that was more concerned with the sanctions than the war. The pro-government media constantly told news consumers that the economic difficulties and the rise in energy prices had not been caused by the war launched by Russia but by the sanctions that the EU had imposed in response to the aggression. Public opinion research clearly shows the impact of these narratives on the perceptions of the Hungarian public. The polls readily capture how the Hungarian public's opinion has changed over time. This study is primarily based on a content analysis of the relevant shows of the M1 public television channel, but we have also relied on some insights from public opinion polls to inform our analysis." (Abstract)
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"The study examines the coverage of solar energy in East African news media, specifically focusing on 63 stories from a leading daily newspaper and television station in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania from January to December 2023. Reporters and editors have reported limited coverage of solar energy du
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e to various factors, including: lack of knowledge; budget constraints; market unattractiveness of solar energy stories; lack of knowledge among farmers, solar technology suppliers, and stakeholders; and lack of reporters specialising in solar energy coverage. The study found that solar energy stories were rarely featured on the front page of three publications over the 12 months monitored. Most stories in the three studied publications appeared on pages beyond page 5. News stories dominated coverage of solar energy across the three countries, accounting for 8 out of every ten solar-related stories in newspapers and television. Conventional news reporting (he-said-she-said) made up most of the coverage. Solar energy use in agriculture (Productive Use of Solar Energy in agriculture) Findings reveal that out of the total coverage, 30 stories (representing 47.6%) focused on solar energy use in agriculture. The highest number out of these 30 stories addressed issues of financing off-grid solar solutions and community impact. Stories on solar entrepreneurship and innovation came second, followed by PUSE stakeholder coordination and ecosystem support." (Executive summary)
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"Forcibly displaced people often face restrictive migration policies and stereotypical discourses. Therefore, this study analyzes UNHCR's public communication strategies towards the Syrian and Central African crises. Through a comparative-synchronic multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of U
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NHCR's (international) press releases (N = 28), news stories (N = 233), photos (N = 462) and videos (N = 50) of 2015, we examined its main representation and argumentation strategies. First, we found that UNHCR primarily represents forcibly displaced people in its press releases and news as victimized and/or voiceless masses, reproducing humanitarian savior and deservingness logics. However, stories, photos, and videos frequently portray them also as empowered individuals. This can be partially explained by media logics and political and private sector discourses and agenda-building opportunities. Moreover, UNHCR mainly voices pity-based and post-humanitarian Self-oriented solidarity discourses, and links protection to states’ (perceived) interests. Finally, these discursive strategies respond to dominant migration management paradigms and the increasingly neoliberalized, political realist international refugee regime (IRR)." (Abstract)
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