"The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an increased challenge for journalists and media professionals worldwide. However, there is a lack of information on these adversities in many developing countries, including Bangladesh. Our study aims to explore these challenges and risks associated with journalism
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, including those who cover the health beat of news agencies in Bangladesh during the pandemic. The study follows a qualitative research approach as we interviewed national and local level journalists of leading newspapers, television channels, news agencies, and online news portals of Bangladesh. Twenty-eight in-depth interviews (IDI) were conducted following purposive sampling technique and a semi-structured interview schedule was used for data collection. The collected data were audio-taped, transcribed, and later on analyzed thematically. Five themes emerged from our findings as the participants reported of challenges in adopting to the new communication technologies and methods, job insecurity and financial crises, loss of freedom of expression, problems accessing credible information, and health and safety issues. We conclude that specific protocols on job/salary protection, training on new information and communication technologies (ICTs), precise laws and policies on circulation and access to information, and a support system for sound physical and mental health of the journalists need to be prioritised during the pandemic." (Abstract)
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"This article explores how local values and social identities can be integrated into Ghana’s formal COVID-19 public health communication interventions using community radio. The study adopted a qualitative approach using focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and reflexive thematic analysis
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. The ten-step participatory planning and action model to involve the community in the social change process is employed as the theoretical framework for this article. The study found that Radio Peace’s COVID-19 communication intervention is participatory due to the involvement of listeners in its programming. Also, local narratives and values were considered in designing locally relevant COVID-19 interventions through the audience’s access to the station’s activities. We suggest that dominant narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic be adapted to local realities by recognizing marginalized voices through listener involvement and access to local community radio stations." (Abstract)
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"This book presents the perspectives of some of the main players, both academics and professionals, in communication for sustainable development and social change so as to provide valuable lessons for future generations of change agents. It places emphasis on both the theoretical foundation and prac
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tical applications and ethical concerns in communication for development and social change. Most of the available historical accounts in development communications make a distinction between the modernization paradigm, the dependency paradigm and the multiplicity or participatory paradigm. These historical accounts have been dominated by framing developments within these paradigms, as the logical offspring of the Western drive to develop the world after colonization and the Second World War. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in the late eighties, together with the rise of the U.S. as the only remaining 'superpower,' the emergence of the European Union and China, the gradual coming to the fore of regional powers, such as the BRICS countries, and the recent meltdown of the world financial system has rendered disastrous consequences for people everywhere. (Publisher description)
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"Through an action media methodology, various participatory, grassroots, and traditional media methods, such as role plays, movie screenings, and drawing, were used with eight HIV-positive children to empower them to collectively respond to better treatment adherence. The paper demonstrates how, thr
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ough a process of participatory methodologies, the young children developed a cricital consciousness about their lived experiences and were empowered to actively participate in decision making and their right to treatment." (Abstract)
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"Entertainment-education for Health Behaviour Change: Issues and Perspectives in Africa is a collection of essays from some of the leading scholars in entertainment-education, including writers from South Africa, Nigeria, and the United States. Chapters cover a wide range of application and strategi
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es for entertainment-education, from mass media campaigns to participatory communication for behaviour change in health interventions including polio eradication and HIV/AIDS. Through reviews of past programmes and discussions of areas of potential research, these scholars highlight an emerging approach that is set to change health education and behaviour change strategies around the world." (Publisher description)
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"The book questions whether and how young citizens in Africa engage with media and communications technologies and platforms in a desire to be included in the change processes of their societies. The theme echoes some of the claims made by disenchanted and frustrated youth and other citizens in the
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streets of North Africa’s cities in 2011 and 2012. They were severely critical of the governance structures in their countries, mass social mobilizations took place, governments fell and, in the aftermath, the slow process of transition continued, now with one tyrant less but still with uncertain outcomes and huge challenges for the social and economic development of these countries. Youth in particular engaged massively, visibly, loudly and dramatically around demands to be involved and included in their countries’ development processes. This yearbook taps into the less visible and dramatic, but nevertheless highly dynamic and influential, process of media development and the enlargement of youth-driven, deliberative spaces which sub-Saharan Africa is currently experiencing." (Nordicom website)
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"This book traces some of the key research conducted over a ten-year period by honours, MA and PhD students who have attended the CCMS Entertainment Education / communication for participatory development course from its inception in 2002, until 2011. There has been a marked shift in the paradigm gu
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iding this post-graduate course, which is explored in the introductory chapter. Innovative methodologies and indigenised theories are brought to bear through each research project, which include conceptually integrated, paradigm-specific graduate work. It keeps abreast of current debates, contributes to international conferences and peer-reviewed publications and assists CCMS in retaining a comparative world benchmark. Much of the work included in this collection reflects the Freireian derived experientialist pedagogy of CCMS, where students take responsibility for developing their own research directions within specific research programmes. There is a strong emphasis in this collected work on media, social justice, and human rights issues, especially relating to historically disadvantaged communities. The book includes two primary research foci: development communication and public health communication. Development communication invokes new ways of harnessing media and localised cultural frames in promoting development strategies, health promotion, private-public partnerships and community development. Public health communication in the context of this work involves applying the emergent field of Education Entertainment via a framework of communication for social and behavioural change. In order to provide a wide range of examples of research approaches and topics, we have included edited, shortened versions of 35 research papers." (Pages xix-xx)
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