"The first of four thematic sections, “African Newspaper Networks,” considers the work that newspaper editors did to relate events within their locality to happenings in far-off places. This work of correlation and juxtaposition made it possible for distant people to see themselves as fellow tra
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vellers. “Experiments with Genre” explores how newspapers nurtured the development of new literary genres, such as poetry, realist fiction, photoplays, and travel writing in African languages and in English. “Newspapers and Their Publics” looks at the ways in which African newspapers fostered the creation of new kinds of communities and served as networks for public interaction, political and otherwise. The final section, “Afterlives, ” is about the longue durée of history that newspapers helped to structure, and how, throughout the twentieth century, print allowed contributors to view their writing as material meant for posterity." (Publisher description)
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"Research on popular culture is a dynamic, fast-growing domain. In scholarly terms, it cuts across many areas, including communication studies, sociology, history, American studies, anthropology, literature, journalism, folklore, economics, and media and cultural studies. The Routledge Companion to
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Global Popular Culture provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, internationally-aware, and conceptually agile guide to the most important aspects of popular culture scholarship. Specifically, this Companion includes: "interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing popular culture; wide-ranging case studies; discussions of economic and policy underpinnings; analysis of textual manifestations of popular culture; examinations of political, social, and cultural dynamics and discussions of emerging issues such as ecological sustainability and labor. Featuring scholarly voices from across six continents, The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture presents a nuanced and wide-ranging survey of popular culture research." (Publisher description)
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"Case studies of micro-enterprise, girls' education, and population programs suggest that our discourse limits our potential to conceive of development, communication, and gender outside of neoliberal ideologies. Advocacy for global social justice demands a different accountability through critical
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research." (Publisher description)
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"Das Fazit der Beiträge in diesem Heft bringt Snežana Milivojevic nüchtern auf den Punkt: „Der Glaube, dass ein freier Markt gleichbedeutend mit freien Medien ist, hat sich in den Transformationsländern als Illusion erwiesen.“ Die größte Gefahr für unabhängigen Journalismus liegt dort ni
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cht vor allem darin – wie es derzeit laut Olga Tokariuk in der Ukraine der Fall ist –, Gewalt, Entführung und Morddrohungen ausgesetzt zu sein, sondern vor allem in der Abhängigkeit von Finanzquellen: Zwar entsprechen die gesetzlichen Rahmenbedingungen für Medien mittlerweile internationalen Standards, doch als viel schädlicher, so schreibt Sanela Hodžic im Fall Bosnien-Herzegowinas, gilt der Zugriff geschäftlicher Netzwerke und politischer Interessengruppen auf die Medien. Besonders deutlich wird das auch in den Beiträgen zu Bulgarien, Serbien, Albanien und Ungarn. Zudem stellen Péter Techet in Ungarn wie auch Remzi Lani in Albanien fest, dass Journalisten meist schreiben können, was sie wollen, aber niemand darauf regiert: „Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber Kritik führt zur Abwertung des freien Wortes.“ Deshalb warnt auch Christian Mihr von „Reporter ohne Grenzen“: „Freiheit, um die nicht gerungen wird, stirbt.“ Es gibt aber auch Lichtblicke: In der Ukraine legen mehrere unabhängige Sender Wert auf professionellen Journalismus und finanzieren sich durch Crowdfunding. Die Slowakei findet sich auf der Rangliste von „Reporter ohne Grenzen“ auf Platz 14 (Deutschland steht auf Platz 12, die Schweiz auf Platz 20). Nicht zuletzt zeugen auch die Autoren und Autorinnen dieser Ausgabe von den bestehenden Oasen für qualitätsbewussten Journalismus in Osteuropa." (Editorial)
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"The Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation provides tools for managers and evaluators to address questions about the performance of public and nonprofit programs. Neatly integrating authoritative, high-level information with practicality and readability, this guide gives you the tools and process
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es you need to analyze your program's operations and outcomes more accurately. This new fourth edition has been thoroughly updated and revised, with new coverage of the latest evaluation methods, including: culturally responsive evaluation; adopting designs and tools to evaluate multi-service community change programs; using role playing to collect data; using cognitive interviewing to pre-test surveys; coding qualitative data. You'll discover robust analysis methods that produce a more accurate picture of program results, and learn how to trace causality back to the source to see how much of the outcome can be directly attributed to the program. Written by award-winning experts at the top of the field, this book also contains contributions from the leading evaluation authorities among academics and practitioners to provide the most comprehensive, up-to-date reference on the topic. Valid and reliable data constitute the bedrock of accurate analysis, and since funding relies more heavily on program analysis than ever before, you cannot afford to rely on weak or outdated methods. This book gives you expert insight and leading edge tools that help you paint a more accurate picture of your program's processes and results, including: obtaining valid, reliable, and credible performance data; engaging and working with stakeholders to design valuable evaluations and performance monitoring systems; assessing program outcomes and tracing desired outcomes to program activities; providing robust analyses of both quantitative and qualitative data" (Publisher description)
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"This chapter provides an overview of development and social change by talking about advocacy approaches to social justice. Advocacy communication offers a critical approach within the field of development, working toward social justice. Recognizing conditions of globalization contributes toward an
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analysis of problems and solutions that privilege normative and structural change. Advocacy communication engages strategic intervention with clear political positions, having no pretense toward neutrality, and resisting hegemonic dominance in valuing social justice. Focusing on advocacy allows one to consider the potential value of social change, recognizing the latent and manifest politics of approaches to intervention. The chapter also explores the role of communication and media in facilitating and limiting the potential for advocacy. It concludes with future research areas that would contribute toward social justice." (Summary)
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"Press freedom is a key component of the general level of democracy in a country. Most often, changes in the state of media freedom have happened in tandem with changes in broader freedoms, therefore making it a sensitive indicator of the overall health of a democracy. In some cases, its deteriorati
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on might even warn us about bigger forces at work and point to an emerging or consolidating regime that is moving in the direction of restricting both political rights and civil liberties. Overall data on the global trends in the past five years–as shown in the global average overall and subcategory scores in the Freedom in the World report–reinforces this assertion." (Conclusion)
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"Die vorliegende Inhaltsanalyse untersucht über drei Monate hinweg die Konfliktberichterstattung der Hauptnachrichtensendungen der vier reichweitenstärksten deutschen Fernsehsender (Das Erste, ZDF, RTL und Sat.1). Anhand von 444 Nachrichtenbeiträgen über internationale Konflikte und Kriege werde
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n öffentlich-rechtliche und private Nachrichtensendungen hinsichtlich der Häufigkeit der Berichterstattung und verschiedener journalistischer Qualitätskriterien miteinander verglichen. Die untersuchten Merkmale der journalistischen Qualitätsdimensionen Vielfalt, Relevanz und Professionalität werden von den Nachrichtensendungen beider Programmanbieter überwiegend erfüllt, die öffentlich-rechtlichen Sender schneiden aber insgesamt – vor allem mit Blick auf eine ausgewogene und kritische Berichterstattung – etwas besser ab." (Abstract)
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"Transversal dissent by communities whose actions and identities are no longer primarily state centric but, rather, have shifted to cross identity boundaries is one of the most important developments for understanding how politics is being transformed today. Burmese media groups, political activists
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, migrants, and refugees, while challenging the state of Myanmar and, at times, the sovereign state power of host states, have not yet been openly challenging the state system itself. In fact, they generally desire to rebuild a community within such a sovereign state system. Yet, the work of activists in exile offers insights into "the intrinsically co-Constitutive relation between the 'informal' and the 'formal' political spaces and how they transform each other" (O'Kane 2006)." (Concluding thoughts, page 158-159)
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"To a certain extent the field's shortcomings could be the consequence of academic work increasingly trapped in the normativity of the development industry and out of touch with the variety of agents concerned with social injustice worldwide, who are deploying communication and media strategies to a
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dvance their struggles." (Page 134)
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"This chapter argues that in order to understand contemporary forms of video activism, we need to extend our analytical scope beyond the confinements of the strategic work of social movement actors. It offers a schematic map of the various fields and disciplines in which video for social change has
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been given analytical attention pointing towards three key approaches and theoretical horizons in the literature. The chapter provides a brief history of video activism by drawing parallels between the early days of analog video cassettes during the so called “Portapak revolution” to the emergence of digital video and online sharing platforms such as YouTube. It provides an introduction to the notion of “radical online video” as a label for identifying and analyzing a broad range of video for change in contemporary online environments. Finally, the chapter broaches a discussion of some of the challenges facing video activism today." (Summary)
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"Clear categorization of what is media development and what is communication for development is often problematic and much of this chapter focuses on continuities that exist across the fields whilst acknowledging there are genuine, well-argued, and real reasons why there should be a strong conceptua
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l distinction between the two. There are numerous cross-over organizations, which are clear in their support to both media development and media for development. The delineation between media development and communication for development is blurred. There are many reasons to think that the future will make such distinctions more blurred. The chapter looks at current trends likely to make these distinctions less useful, and suggests a terminology that might be more useful in describing the very real conceptual differences between the two fields." (Summary)
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"The Theater for Development (TfD) movement seeks to empower subaltern communities by using their own language and culture to strategize solutions to their problems. This chapter looks at historical and cultural factors in both the pre-colonial and colonial periods, which may have encouraged the ris
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e of TfD. It examines more immediate influences, mostly in the post-colonial period, and how they have created diverse forms of social theater in different continents and regions. After an attempt to elucidate key theories concerning the practice of TfD, the chapter discusses some of its articulations with a broader range of global communications. Arguably the most direct progenitor of TfD can be found in schools and University Drama. One of the major differences between TfD in Africa and in the rest of the Third World lies in patronage, the source of funding and its direct or indirect impact on the ideological stance of theater activists." (Summary)
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"This chapter explains the innovative social change strategies that civil society stakeholders, exploring the appropriation and development of information and communications technology (ICT) tools and techniques for the empowerment of ordinary citizens, have sought to develop and carry out in practi
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ce. The chapter addresses the communicative dimension of ICT and social accountability. It looks at a new generation of social accountability practices that through their creation of a solid evidence base seek to facilitate citizens’ direct forms of interaction with public service providers and government officials. The chapter demonstrates that social accountability mechanisms indeed constitute intentional processes of communication for social change and are beneficially studied empirically by the dominant methodological approaches of the communication for social change (C4SC) discipline." (Summary)
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"This chapter focuses on community radio as one form of community media, and explores how citizens and activists use community radio stations for development and social change, despite the challenges of financial sustainability. First, a brief history of community radio is provided, in an internatio
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nal context; after which the chapter explores various examples of how community radio stations have been used for social change. The chapter also explores how stations having new media technologies are accommodating digital platforms, engaging with listeners via online social networking sites, and using cellphone-based systems of feedback. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the role of radio in creating a space for the formation of publics, and as a tool of resistance." (Summary)
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