"The field of memory studies has typically focused on everyday memory and commemoration practices through which we construct meaning and identities. The Right to Memory looks beyond these everyday practices, focusing instead on how memory relates to human rights and socio-legal constructs in order t
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o legitimize and protect groups and individuals. With case studies including Polish Holocaust Law, the Indian origins of Amartya Sen's capability theory approach, and the right to memory through digital technologies in Brazilian and British museums, this collected volume seeks to establish the right to memory as a foundational topic in memory studies." (Publisher description)
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"This book explores the challenges that disinformation, fake news, and post-truth politics pose to democracy from a multidisciplinary perspective. The authors analyse and interpret how the use of technology and social media as well as the emergence of new political narratives has been progressively
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changing the information landscape, undermining some of the pillars of democracy. The volume sheds light on some topical questions connected to fake news, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of its impact on democracy. In the Introduction, the editors offer some orientating definitions of post-truth politics, building a theoretical framework where various different aspects of fake news can be understood. The book is then divided into three parts: Part I helps to contextualise the phenomena investigated, offering definitions and discussing key concepts as well as aspects linked to the manipulation of information systems, especially considering its reverberation on democracy. Part II considers the phenomena of disinformation, fake news, and post-truth politics in the context of Russia, which emerges as a laboratory where the phases of creation and diffusion of fake news can be broken down and analysed; consequently, Part II also reflects on the ways to counteract disinformation and fake news. Part III moves from case studies in Western and Central Europe to reflect on the methodological difficulty of investigating disinformation, as well as tackling the very delicate question of detection, combat, and prevention of fake news." (Publisher description)
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"A diverse range of international and interdisciplinary scholars take a closer look at how gender and sexuality have been essential in the evolution of comics, and how gender and sexuality in comics demand that we re-frame and re-view comics history. Essays cover a wide array of intersectional topic
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s including Queer Underground and Alternative comics, Feminist Autobiography, Re-drawing disability, Latina testimony, and re-evaluating the critical whiteness and masculinity of superheroes in this first truly global reference text to gender and sexuality in comics." (Publisher description)
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"In times of increasing mediatization and digitalization media play an important role in political and societal transformation processes. The authors of this volume take an actor-centered perspective to shed light on current cases in Arab and Asian countries. They inquire into the ways processes of
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networking and mobilization evolve in the context of restricted media systems and state-dominated public spheres." (Publisher description)
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"Digital media, networks and archives reimagine and revitalize individual, social and cultural memory but they also ensnare it, bringing it under new forms of control. Understanding these paradoxical conditions of remembering and forgetting through today’s technologies needs bold interdisciplinary
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interventions. Digital Memory Studies seizes this challenge and pioneers an agenda that interrogates concepts, theories and histories of media and memory studies, to map a holistic vision for the study of the digital remaking of memory. Through the lenses of connectivity, archaeology, economy, and archive, contributors illuminate the uses and abuses of the digital past via an array of media and topics, including television, videogames and social media, and memory institutions, network politics and the digital afterlife." (Publisher description)
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"Tracking the ways in which journalism and memory mutually support, undermine, repair and challenge each other, this fascinating collection brings together leading scholars in journalism and memory studies to investigate the complicated role that journalism plays in relation to the past." (Publisher
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description)
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"This book aims to provide a context in which a clear link can be traced between the politics of memory and its manifold representations and misrepresentations in public media towards a viable politics of justice. The assumption is that public awareness and perceptions of injustice, whether they are
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political, economic, or social, depend on the mass media of communication for recognition and valorization – including, today, new communication and information technologies such as social media platforms. Undoubtedly this assumption is based on a system in which mass media can operate independently, fairly, and in a balanced and unbiased way: in other words, according to a much vaunted and fast vanishing ‘public service ethos’ imbued with high standards of truthtelling, objectivity, balance, and accountability. A parallel assumption is that if the public is made aware and has access to relevant information and knowledge, it will be motivated to pressure governments for reform, reparation, and – in the best possible scenario – some kind of consensus between all parties on ways to move forward as a nation. As we have pointed out above, this argues for an a priori ‘right to memory’ that affirms and protects those frameworks and structures of collective memory that guarantee the physical, psychological, and symbolic integrity of a group of people or, indeed, a nation. There are many aspects to the debate." (Introduction, page 17)
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"This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of Media Memory and brings Media and Mediation to the forefront of Collective Memory research. The essays explore a diversity of media technologies (television, radio, film and new media), genres (news, fiction, documentaries) and contexts (US, UK, Spai
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n, Nigeria, Germany and the Middle East)." (Publisher description)
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"Mobile communication has an increasing impact on people's lives and society. Ubiquitous media influence the way users relate to their surroundings, and data services like text and pictures lead to a culture shaped by thumbs. Representing several years of research into the social and cultural effect
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s of mobile phone use, this volume assembles the fascinating approaches and new insights of leading scientists and practitioners. The book contains the results of a first international survey on the social consequences of mobile phones. It provides a comprehensive inventory of today's issues and an outlook in mobile media, society and their future study." (Publisher description)
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"[...] We consider here a wide range of post-communisms. At one extremestands the former German Democratic Republic: There, the politicalcollapse of communism immediately preceded the economic and socialdestruction of the old way of life. As Maryellen Boyle shows, theaspirations of the people who ov
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erthrew communism were swept aside bythe juggernaut of reunification. This anschluss - to borrow Habermas’shistorically loaded term -was immediately followed by the imposition ofWest German ideas and structures. Within broadcasting, this foundexpression in the setting up of a new system integrated into the existing West German framework. These structural changes were accompanied bythe appointment of Western managers, often from the ruling ChristianDemocratic Party, and an extensive purge of the existing staff. EasternGermany has been rather brutally and very finally integrated into the worldmarket at the expense of the people who ran the Stalinist state.A t the other extreme stands the Chinese experience. There the processof integration, and the destruction of central planning, are proceeding asrapidly in television as in any other part of society. The political system,however, remains controlled by the very same people who have been inpower for years. As Yu Huang shows, the massive development oftelevision in China has been largely the result of the introduction of localautonomy and a shift towards commercial financing. This has led to strainsand tensions between the central party apparatus and the broadcasters.The aftermath of Tiananmen Square was to increase political control butnot to interrupt the growth of the market. One might say that, so far atleast, the process of integration into the world market has been to thebenefit of the people who ran the old system.Between these two extremes lie the majority of countries of the formerSoviet empire in Europe and its local offshoots elsewhere. In differentcountries there have been varying degrees of political change and the scaleand extent of the introduction of market mechanisms and privatization hasbeen extremely uneven. We publish two articles which reflect on East andCentral Europe and which attempt to theorize those experiences. ColinSparks and Anna Reading look at the main currents of social theory whichhave tried t o explain the nature of the end of communism and itsaftermath. They apply propositions derived from these to the study oftelevision in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. KarolJakubowicz makes wider geographical generalizations, but concentrateshis attention mostly on Poland. Despite recognizing the continuingpolitical pressure on the media, he is finally optimistic as to the chances of‘depoliticizing’ television [...] (Editorial)
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