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Arab authorities use digital surveillance to control press freedom: Journalists’ perceptions

Miral Sabry AlAshry

Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance, volume 25, issue 3 (2023), pp. 250-266

"The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of digital surveillance by Arab authorities, which face risks and threats of surveillance, and how journalists seek to press freedom by using tools and techniques to communicate securely. Design/methodology/approach: The study used focus group ... more

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Misinformation on Misinformation: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

Sacha Altay, Manon Berriche, Acerbi Alberto

Social Media + Society, volume 9, issue 1 (2023), 13 pp.

"Alarmist narratives about online misinformation continue to gain traction despite evidence that its prevalence and impact are overstated. Drawing on research examining the use of big data in social science and reception studies, we identify six misconceptions about misinformation and highlight the ... more

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‘Top-Tier’ Journals: Does a Global Reputation Mean a Global Orientation?

Cherian George, Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis

Global Media Studies Network, March 20 (2023)

"Academia as an industry has come to rely on journal impact factors as convenient proxy measures of faculty members’ research quality. As competition intensifies — among individuals, departments, and universities — such bibliometrics have grown in importance. At many institutions, researchers ... are pushed to publish in journals that are highly ranked. Many scholars of non-western societies have long noted, though, that “top-tier” journals, while international in reputation, are far from global in orientation. This is an issue that we and our colleagues in the Global Media Studies Network are keen to discuss. First, though, what exactly is the current state of affairs? We looked at 20 SSCI-indexed communication journals with high five-year journal impact factors. We categorised all the articles they published in 2021 and 2022 according to their geographic focus: what country or countries was each article studying? Here is what we found: [see chart]. This snapshot shows clearly that top-tier journals generally have a geographic diversity problem. Most of the articles are about the west, with a high proportion of articles focusing purely on the United States. Also striking is the lack of North-South comparative work, despite years of advocacy for comparative research. The chart may underestimate the imbalance. We coded many of the articles— literature reviews, meta-studies, or purely methodological or theoretical pieces— as geographically “non-specific” as they have no explicit focus on any particular country, but since these tend to be built on past work that was even less diverse than the field is now, most of these should probably be considered genetically western. One interesting pattern is that journals devoted to digital communication host a higher proportion of non-western work. This could be because the digital is so globalised and new that research on phenomena beyond the west (say, disinformation in Kenya’s social media) is intelligible to western editors, while research on older offline phenomena (say, caste discrimination on Indian television) requires extensive contextual explanation that journals do not have the patience for. The digital may also be more amenable than offline communication to the quantitative research methods favoured by many top journals." more

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Connecting every school in Indonesia: A bespoke implementation framework

Cahya Ratih

Geneva: ITU (2023), vii, 38 pp.

"The unprecedented situation brought on by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced many sectors in Indonesia to transform and deliver their public services using ICTs. While the government has leveraged its school connectivity programme, started before the pandemic, in response to the tremend ... more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023
Top Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 158 pp.

"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are ... showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators. • Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. • When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation. • Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected. • Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws. • Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10) more

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Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials

Gillian Rose

Los Angeles: Sage, 5th ed. (2023), xv, 454 pp.

"Whatever level of experience you have, this classic text will provide you with the key skills you need to complete a visual methods research project, understand the rationale behind each step, and engage with the contexts and power relations that shape our interpretation of visual images. With a cl ... more

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Bridging Journalism’s Data Viz Accessibility Gap

Johny Cassidy

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 28 pp.

"Making a visual format accessible for people who can’t see is challenging, but there’s a huge community already invested in working out viable solutions. The tension that remains for them is in receiving a clear mandate for this work from seni ... more

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Women in African Publishing and the Book Trade: A Series of Profiles. Series II

Hans M. Zell

African Book Publishing Record, volume 48, issue 2 (2022), pp. 1-69

"The gains made by African women publishers need to be safeguarded and consolidated, however it is still not straightforward for women to publish. We shall no doubt see more women publishers establishing and heading publishing houses. …There are ... more

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Reading the Radio-Magazine: Culture, Decolonization and the Paigc’s Rádio libertação

Alexandra Reza

Interventions, volume 24, issue 6 (2022), pp. 857-878

"This essay examines the history of the PAIGC radio station Rádio Libertação, broadcast from Conakry from 1967. The essay asks how to read the radio station today, and suggests we might see the radio station as a manifestation – albeit limited ... more

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Disinformation and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine: Threats and governance responses

Paris: OECD (2022), 33 pp.

"The spread of disinformation around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects wider challenges related to the shift in how information is produced and distributed. Platform and algorithm designs can amplify the spread of disinformation by facilitating the creation of echo chambers and confirmation bi ... more

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The Revolution Will be Televised in Arabic: Iran’s Media Infrastructure Abroad

Hamdi Malik

Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2022), 19 pp.

"The media space is increasingly becoming yet another battlefield for the Islamic Republic to consolidate its hegemony throughout the Middle East. Iran’s media outreach, particularly in Arabic, is only likely to increase, especially online. Supreme Leader Khamenei is keen to ... more

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Making the Invisible Visible. Guideline 1: An Intersectional Gender Guide to Monitoring and Documenting Attacks Against Journalists and Social Communicators

Article 19 (2022), 22 pp.

"An intersectional gender approach starts with the fact that differences between the roles of women and men – in terms of their relative position in society and the distribution of resources, opportunities, constraints, and power in a given context – cannot be analysed in a separate silo. Instea ... more

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The detection of political deepfakes

Markus Appel, Fabian Prietzel

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, volume 27, issue 4, zmac008 (2022), 13 pp.

"In this article, a theoretical model on the detection of deepfakes by ordinary citizens is introduced. The authors conducted three studies in which deepfakes with political content were presented. The deepfakes showed UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson or Barack Obama. In the deepfake videos, the ... more

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Born in the Fire: What We Can Learn from How Digital Publishers in the Global South Approach Platforms

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Federica Cherubini

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 33 pp.

"Based on interviews with a strategic sample of 11 publishers in eight low- and middle-income countries, the authors of this report analyse how various digital publishers across a range of Global South countries approach digital platforms: both big platform companies such as Google and Meta; rapidly ... more

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Report: Coordinating Media Assistance and Journalism Support Efforts

Michael Randall, Aida Al-Kaisy

Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) (2022), 40 pp.

"All respondents in the interviews—including those who shared a negative experience of coordination—agreed that at a minimum, sharing information and exploring synergies should be fixtures of the media development landscape in any given country. The positive impact of such activities on value fo ... r money, aid effectiveness, and public perceptions of development programmes was recognised across the board and particularly in the context of the fundamental principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Clearly, the scale of coordination work will depend largely on the volume of programming on the ground. However, even in those countries that see low levels of activity or have a single dominant programme, there was perceived value in introducing media development as a separate thematic strand in wider coordination efforts. The format and structure inherent in the selected coordination mechanism will also be shaped by the needs and priorities of local actors, but in general, a scheduled exchange of information combined with a platform for knowledge management was welcomed. The recommended level of involvement of donor organisations is a moot point since few if any coordination mechanisms have succeeded in regularly bringing donors and implementing agencies to the table. In 2016, as part of the MedMedia project, EC officials attempted to organise a roundtable for EU donors and development agencies committed to supporting media in the MENA region. Despite the best efforts of those concerned, the event was attended by representatives from just two member states—Austria and Latvia—neither of which was active in this field. Conversely, the donor coordination process that was set up in Ukraine in 2015 includes only limited representation from implementing agencies and exists in parallel to the coordination group assembled by GFMD in the wake of the Russian invasion. While GFMD invites donors to its meetings and shares information via email and online documents, the donors have yet to reciprocate. Thus, in real terms, there is no silver bullet or single best-practice model. However, based on its findings and conclusions, this report recommends that a strong level of interagency engagement should become the default position for all media development projects." (Recommendations, page 34-35) more

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Exploring attitudes towards online news: The role of online intermediaries in news consumption

Ofcom;Ipsos (2022), 60 pp.

"Ofcom has identified three features not currently captured under the existing regulatory framework that may present a risk to media plurality: online intermediaries and their algorithms control the prominence they give to different news sources and stories; the basis on which online intermediaries ... more

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Managing Evaluations in the Field: Step-By-Step Planning Guidance. Analysis and Evidence

Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (2022), 17 pp.

"This guidance is useful for ICRC teams in the field managing different evaluation types that cover various interventions. Importantly, it is not an evaluation manual. Nor is it the only source to draw on when planning and managing an evaluation. It should be used in conjunction with other ICRC poli ... more

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Attributing Public Ignorance in Vaccination Narratives

Samantha Vanderslott, Luisa Enria, Alex Bowmer, Abass Kamara, Shelley Lees

Social Science & Medicine, issue 307: 115152 (2022), 11 pp.

"Examples from Sierra Leone, Uganda, and India show how ‘ignorant public’ framings are used as explanation for vaccine hesitancy through assigned roles for institutions and publics, and the consequences this narrative has for vaccination encounters. These examples are based on ethnographic field ... more

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Pentecostalism and Media in Africa: Theoretical Explorations of Power and Agency of Media Platforms and Their Users

Ibrahim Murtala

Religion Compass, volume 17, issue 1 e12452 (2022), 9 pp.

"This survey paper interrogates four theoretical frameworks often invoked to analyze intersections between media and religion: mediatization, mediation of meaning, mediation of the beyond, and religious social shaping of technology. The paper surveys several research works informed by the aforementi ... more

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An Uphill Battle: From Impunity to Justice for Journalist Murders
Top Insights

Evelien Wijkstra, Jos Midas Bartman

Free Press Unlimited (2022), 31 pp.

"For this report we analyzed hundreds of cases of journalists who were murdered in reprisal for their work. What stands out is their courage to report misdemeanor by those in power despite the clear and often well-known risks this entails for them. What stands out as well is the lack of capacity in ... more

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023 Top Insights

An Uphill Battle: From Impunity to Justice for Journalist Murders Top Insights

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023
Top Insights

An Uphill Battle: From Impunity to Justice for Journalist Murders
Top Insights