"The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance explores the concepts, methodologies, and implications of collective intelligence for democratic governance, in the first comprehensive survey of this field. Illustrated by a collection of inspiring case studies and edit
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ed by three pioneers in collective intelligence, this handbook serves as a unique primer on the science of collective intelligence applied to public challenges and will inspire public actors, academics, students, and activists across the world to apply collective intelligence in policymaking and administration to explore its potential, both to foster policy innovations and reinvent democracy." (Publisher description)
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"Drawing on cases from revolutionary France to the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the international authors probe the nature and agency of local blasphemy accusations, the historical and legal framework in which they were expressed and the violence, both physical and symbolic, accompanying them. In doing
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so, the volume reveals how cultures of blasphemy, and related acts of heresy, apostasy and sacrilege, were a companion to or acted as a trigger for physical action but also a form of how violence was experienced. More generally, it shows the importance of religious sensibilities in modern society and the violent potential contained in criticism or ridicule of the sacred and secular alike." (Publisher description)
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"This book discusses the role of television drama series on a global scale, analyzing these dramas across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Contributors consider the role of television dramas as economically valuable cultural products and with their depictions of gender roles, sexua
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lities, race, cultural values, political systems, and religious beliefs as they analyze how these programs allow us to indulge our innate desire to share human narratives in a way that binds us together and encourages audiences to persevere as a community on a global scale. Contributors also go on to explore the role of television dramas as a medium that indulges fantasies and escapism and reckons with reality as it allows audiences to experience emotions of happiness, sorrow, fear, and outrage in both realistic and fantastical scenarios." (Publisher description)
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"In Game Production Studies, an international group of established and emerging researchers takes a closer look at the everyday realities of video game production, ranging from commercial industries to independent creators and cultural intermediaries. Across sixteen chapters, the authors deal with i
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ssues related to labour, game development, monetization and publishing, as well as local specificities. As the first edited collection dedicated solely to video game production, this volume provides a timely resource for anyone interested in how games are made and at what costs." (Publisher description)
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"Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories provides a comprehensive overview of conspiracy theories as an important social, cultural and political phenomenon in contemporary life. This handbook provides the most complete analysis of the phenomenon
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to date. It analyses conspiracy theories from a variety of perspectives, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It maps out the key debates, and includes chapters on the historical origins of conspiracy theories, as well as their political significance in a broad range of countries and regions. Other chapters consider the psychology and the sociology of conspiracy beliefs, in addition to their changing cultural forms, functions and modes of transmission. This handbook examines where conspiracy theories come from, who believes in them and what their consequences are." (Publisher description)
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"The four principles identified as key to Internet Universality are summarised as the R-O-A-M principles, and are fundamental to the development of the Internet in ways that are conducive to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals with no one left behind. These principles are: R – that the int
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ernet is based on human Rights; O – that it is Open; A – that it should be Accessible to all, and M – that it is nurtured by Multistakeholder participation. To enable the concept of Internet Universality to be more concretely understood and applied, UNESCO has spent two years developing indicators for the four principles. These indicators enable the empirical assessment of Internet Universality in terms of its existence at the level of a national Internet environment. By using these new indicators for research, a collage of evidence can be assembled to help governments and other stakeholders to identify achievements and gaps. The indicator framework is tailored for national use in regard to improving the local Internet environment, and is not designed or suited to rank countries in comparison with one another." (Executive summary, page 12)
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"This cutting-edge handbook brings together an international roster of scholars to examine many facets of comics and graphic novels. Contributor essays provide authoritative, up-to-date overviews of the major topics and questions within comic studies, offering readers a truly global approach to unde
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rstanding the field. Essays examine: the history of the temporal, geographical, and formal development of comics, including topics like art comics, manga, comix, and the comics code; issues such as authorship, ethics, adaptation, and translating comics connections between comics and other artistic media (drawing, caricature, film) as well as the linkages between comics and other academic fields like linguistics and philosophy; new perspectives on comics genres, from funny animal comics to war comics to romance comics and beyond." (Publisher description)
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"Small Cinemas in Global Markets addresses aspects such as identity, revisiting the past, internationalized genres, new forms of experimental cinema, markets and production, as well as technological developments of alternative small screens that open new perspectives into small cinema possibilities.
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Small and big markets for small industries reveal an unimagined diversification of the cultural product and consequently the need to analyze the impact at local, regional, and global levels. Much needed to continue and expand the existing scholarship in the field, this volume is based on research by authors who approach their subject from Western theoretical perspectives with a professional (mostly native) knowledge of the language, cultural realities, and film industry practices. It covers aspects from fifteen different countries, including Bolivia, Brazil, China (Hong Kong), Croatia, East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda), Greece, Indonesia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Morocco, and the United States. Since both film and documentary distribution from certain areas of the globe on international markets remains problematic, it is important for the academic field to discuss and circulate them as much as possible, and to create the basis for further exploration." (Publisher description)
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"This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, str
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ategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems." (Publisher description)
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"This guide is designed to be a key reference tool for electoral practitioners including electoral management bodies (EMBs), independent broadcasting authorities and international assistance providers. It aims at improving an understanding of some of the key issues related to media and elections. Th
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e guide is comprised of ten chapters that deal with the issues of media and communications during the electoral process. Each chapter can be read independently so that electoral practitioners only concerned with one facet of media and elections can turn directly to that section as a resource." (Page vi)
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"The Global Journalist in the 21st Century systematically assesses the demographics, education, socialization, professional attitudes and working conditions of journalists in various countries around the world. This book updates the original Global Journalist (1998) volume with new data, adding more
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than a dozen countries, and provides material on comparative research about journalists that will be useful to those interested in doing their own studies. The editors put together this collection working under the assumption that journalists' backgrounds, working conditions and ideas are related to what is reported (and how it is covered) in the various news media round the world, in spite of societal and organizational constraints, and that this news coverage matters in terms of world public opinion and policies. Outstanding features include:"Coverage of 33 nations located around the globe, based on recent surveys conducted among representative samples of local journalist, comprehensive analyses by well-known media scholars from each country, a section on comparative studies of journalists and an appendix with a collection of survey questions used in various nations to question journalists" (Publisher description)
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"Journalism education (based for most of the past three decades at three Pacific universities) and industry short-course training have followed different yet parallel paths in the region. Aid donors have played important roles in both sectors, although often not particularly well coordinated. While
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journalism education was being established in the region for the first time at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1975, media industry executives met to plan a strategy to boost on-the-job training and to defend themselves from growing pressures from post-colonial governments. The industry established the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), which became a major regional media lobby group. Subsequently, the region’s state broadcasters broke away in 1988 to form a rival body, Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association (PIBA), and to establish the region’s first news cooperative, Pacnews. For a brief three-year period between 1988 and 1991, the university journalism education sector and industry training managed reasonable cooperation under UNESCO’s Pacjourn project. During this time, UPNG hosted Pacjourn and its staff of media academics and trainers ran short-courses for the benefit of the media industry. The focus then swung back to Fiji with a new UNESCO project leading to the establishment of the PINA-initiated Pacific Journalism Training Development Centre. While the UPNG Journalism Programme was funded initially by New Zealand aid, DWU was a private institution funded primarily by the Catholic Church and staffed mainly by volunteers. The degree programme founded at USP in the mid 1990s was funded by the French government for four years. In 1994, the Fiji media industry established a vocational training centre, the Fiji Journalism Institute (FJI), with UNESCO and other donor funding assistance along with the Fiji government, which provided office space. Although this venture collapsed after six years under a cloud over financial accountability, both the Fiji Media Council and PINA moved to revive the centre through the Fiji Institute of Technology. The Samoa Polytechnic (now the Samoa Institute of Technology) also established a vocational journalism school in 2002. Fiji has been the only Pacific country where the media industry has established a vocational programme competing with an established journalism school at a university—the region’s largest. This has prompted concerns about duplication and wastage of resources. AusAID, through its Pacific Media and Communications Facility and its associated Media in Development Initiative programme in Papua New Guinea, has gained ascendancy in the region as a media aid donor—and in most other fields, too. It has sought to achieve greater coordination in the region’s media training and aid cooperation between agencies. This also led to the merger of PINA and PIBA in 2004 for the benefit of the region. However, this trend has also led to growing concern in media and academic circles over a loss of independence and sovereignty over media training and educational policies—is aid a panacea or Pandora’s box for media training and education sustainability? It is critical for governance that future media training aid should have more transparency with funds being spread more evenly across several agencies so that no single industry group effectively holds too much power over journalism training policy. And the media should become proactive over reportage and debate over media aid issues and challenge conflicts of interest. Non-government organisations such as AusAID and the UN organisations need to tackle aid policy more robustly to push for a new funding paradigm in support of the Fourth Estate in the region in the digital age." (Conclusion)
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"Written by both leading academic authorities and by Muslim media practitioners, 'Muslims and the Media' is designed as a comprehensive and critical textbook and is set in both the British and international contexts. The book clearly establishes the links between context, content, production and aud
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iences thus reflecting the entire cycle of the communication process and revealing the ways in which meaning is produced and reproduced in the news media. Looking closely at the circumstances and politics surrounding the representation of Muslims across a wide range of journalistic genres, at the presence and influence of Muslims in the processes of news production, and the ways in which audiences, both Muslim and non-Muslim, consume this media, the book brings together coherently a wide range of perspectives to provide crucial insights into the representation - and misrepresentation - of Islam and Muslims today." (Publisher description)
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"From the establishment of the region's first journalism school at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in 1975 with New Zealand aid, Robie traces three decades of South Pacific media education history. He profiles journalism at UPNG, Divine World University and the University of the South Paci
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fic in Fiji with Australian, Commonwealth, French, New Zealand and UNESCO aid. He also examines the impact of the region's politics on the media in the two major economies, Fiji and Papua New Guinea - from the Bougainville conflict and Sandline mercenary crisis to Fiji's coups. The book draws on interviews, research, two news industry surveys, and the author's personal experience as a Pacific media educator." (Publisher description)
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"In many ways, this book is a simple and straightforward product of social science research. A conceptual expectation was created through the integration and extension of existing theory and research findings. The responsiveness argument presented in chapter 2 lead to the expectation that aid bureau
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cracies will try to roughly match the levels of aid they offer with their perception of the domestic political importance of the recipient. It was argued that the news media provide a simple, clear and easily accessible indicator of that importance and, as a result, it was expected that aid bureaucracies will respond to the content of the news media by matching development aid allocations with levels of coverage. From that conceptual foundation, a comparative battery of tests were conducted to evaluate the empirical implications of that expectation, and to address at least a few of the obvious potential objections or critiques. In analysis after analysis, the predicted relationship was found: aid levels and media coverage are clearly correlated." (Page 137)
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"Clearly as important providers of information, the media are more likely to promote better economic performance when they are more likely to satisfy three conditions: the media are independent, provide good-quality information, and have a broad reach. That is, when they reduce the natural asymmetry
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of information, as Joseph Stiglitz puts it in chapter 2, between those who govern and those whom they are supposed to serve, and when they reduce information asymmetries between private agents. Such a media industry can increase the accountability of both businesses and government through monitoring and reputational penalties while also allowing consumers to make more informed decisions.
This book cites many examples that demonstrate the value of information provided by the media. Alexander Dyck and Luigi Zingales (chapter 7) discuss how the media can pressure corporate managers and directors to behave in ways that are socially acceptable, thereby avoiding actions that will result in censure and consumer boycotts. They also report that in Malaysia, a recent survey of institutional investors and equity analysts asked which factors were most important to them in considering corporate governance and the decision to invest in publicly listed corporations. Those surveyed gave more importance to the frequency and nature of public and press comments about companies than to a host of other factors considered key in the academic debate. However, the dissemination of credible information in a timely manner depends critically on how the media business is managed and regulated. The chapters in this book document evidence on media performance and regulations in countries around the world and highlight what type of public policies and economic conditions might hinder the media in supporting economic development in poor countries." (Pages 1-2)
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"Exploring recent developments in Asian television systems in the context of the continually changing global environment, this book covers India, China, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. Country-based analyses are preceded by contribution
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s which analyse processes at the regional level. Chapters explore how television in Asia has responded to new threats and opportunities and provide evidence against the view that global forces will destroy national and regional differences." (Publisher description)
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"Produced in landscape format and attractively designed, this is a valuable practical marketing manual that aims to assist small publishers to make sense of the publishing world, particularly NGOs with publishing activities, but where publishing is not the core function. The manual will guide them t
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hrough the principles and processes of effective marketing, and linking the capabilities of a publishing company to the needs of the customer. The author was formerly Marketing and Managing Director of David Philip Publishers in Cape Town, and is well known for a series of successful marketing workshops she has conducted during each year’s Zimbabwe International Book Fair. Those that are struggling with their marketing will find a wealth of practical, hard-nosed advice in this guide, which covers these topics: (1) Defining your Market, (2) What is Marketing? (3) The Marketing Plan, (4) Sales and Selling, (5) Distribution, Co-operative Publishing and Rights, (6) Publishing, Marketing and Finance, (7) Development Agencies, Donors and Commercial Publishers, and (8) Strategic Planning. Interspersed with the text are a number of practical exercises, and there are also reproductions of flyers and other publicity material as illustrative examples of good practice." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 2458)
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