"This Handbook is an in-depth appraisal of the field of minority languages and communities today. It presents a wide-ranging, coherent picture of the main topics, with key contributions from international specialists in sociolinguistics, policy studies, sociology, anthropology and law. Individual ch
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apters are grouped together in themes, covering regional, non-territorial and migratory language settings across the world. It is the essential reference work for specialist researchers, scholars in ancillary disciplines, research and coursework students, public agencies and anyone interested in language diversity, multilingualism and migration." (Publisher description)
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"This edited volume examines how the growth of social media and ancillary computer systems is affecting the relationship between journalism and the pursuit of truth. Experts explore how news is perceived and identified, presented to the public, and how the public responds to news. They consider soci
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al media’s effect on the craft of journalism as well as the growing role of algorithms, big data, and automatic content production regimes. The volume’s aim is to confront these issues in a way that will be of enduring relevance; the discussions about contemporary journalism inform current students and help scholars in the future. Chapters reflect on questions such as what is different and what remains the same in journalism’s pursuit of truth now that social media has become such a prominent force in news gathering, dissemination, and reinterpretation? How has reader participation and responses changed? What are the implications for journalistic information gathering and truth claims? What is different now about the social roles of journalists and media institutions? How does interaction between journalists and social media affect democratic practices? The chapters offer a mix of empirical and critical work that reflects on journalism’s past, present, and future roles in our lives and in society." (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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"This book is the first collection of original research to explore links between demographics and media coverage of emerging human rights issues. It covers cross-national reporting on human trafficking, HIV/AIDS, water contamination, and child labour; and same-sex marriage, Guantanamo detainee right
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s, immigration reform, and post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States. The research asks questions such as: What are the principal catalysts that propel rights issues into media agendas? Why do some surface more quickly than others? And how do the demographics of cross-national reporting differ from those driving multi-city US nationwide coverage of rights claims? Using community structure theory and innovative Media Vector content analysis, the eight chapters of this book reveal three striking patterns that show how differences in female empowerment, social or economic vulnerability, and Midwestern newspaper geographic location, link powerfully with variations in coverage of rights issues. The patterns connecting demographics and rights claims confirm that coverage of human rights can mirror the concerns of stakeholders and vulnerable groups, contrary to conventional assumptions that media typically serve as "guard dogs" reinforcing the interests of political and economic elites." (Publisher description)
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"Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring brings together some of the most celebrated and respected names in Arab media research to reflect on the communication conditions that preceded and made the Arab uprisings possible." (Publisher description)
"The impact of new media can be better understood through a framework that considers five levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention. New media have the potential to change how citizens think or act, mitigate or exa
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cerbate group conflict, facilitate collective action, spur a backlash among regimes, and garner international attention toward a given country. Evidence from the protests after the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 suggests the utility of examining the role of new media at each of these five levels. Although there is reason to believe the Iranian case exposes the potential benefits of new media, other evidence - such as the Iranian regime's use of the same social network tools to harass, identify, and imprison protesters - suggests that, like any media, the Internet is not a "magic bullet." At best, it may be a "rusty bullet." Indeed it is plausible that traditional media sources were equally if not more important." (Summary)
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"Story Circle is the first collection ever devoted to a comprehensive international study of the digital storytelling movement, exploring subjects of central importance on the emergent and ever-shifting digital landscape. It covers consumer-generated content, memory grids, the digital storytelling y
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outh movement, participatory public history, audience reception, videoblogging and microdocumentary. It pinpoints who is telling what stories where, on what terms, and what they look and sound like. And it explores the boundaries of digital storytelling from China and Brazil to Western Europe and Australia." (Publisher description)
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"This study explores the structure and content of the Arabic blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs. We identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active Arabic language blogs (about half as many as we found in a previous study of the Pe
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rsian blogosphere), discovered several thousand Arabic blogs with mixed use of Arabic, English and French, created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a team of Arabic speakers hand coded over 4,000 blogs. The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs. We found: a Country-Based Network: We found that the Arabic blogosphere is organized primarily around countries [...] Who are Arabic Bloggers? Demographic coding indicates that Arabic bloggers are predominately young and male. The highest proportion of female bloggers is found in the Egyptian youth sub-cluster, while the Maghreb/French Bridge and Syrian clusters have the highest concentration of males. Personal Life and Local Issues are Most Important: Overall, the writing of most bloggers is centered on personal, diary-style observations. Those that write about politics tend to focus on issues within their own country and are more often than not critical of domestic political leaders." (Key findings, page 3-4)
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"We used computational social network mapping in combination with human and automated content analysis to analyze the Iranian blogosphere. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that Iranian bloggers are mainly young democrats critical of the regime, we found a wide range of opinions representing re
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ligious conservative points of view as well as secular and reform-minded ones, and topics ranging from politics and human rights to poetry, religion, and pop culture. Our research indicates that the Persian blogosphere is indeed a large discussion space of approximately 60,000 routinely updated blogs featuring a rich and varied mix of bloggers. Social network analysis reveals the Iranian blogosphere to be dominated by four major network formations, or poles, with identifiable sub-clusters of bloggers within those poles. We label the poles as 1) Secular/Reformist, 2) Conservative/Religious, 3) Persian Poetry and Literature, and 4) Mixed Networks." (Abstract)
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