"This state-of-the-art Handbook provides unique insights into the governance practices and institutions shaping digitalized public spheres. Focusing on the power relations involved, it presents diverse approaches to key debates in media and communication governance, showcasing groundbreaking advance
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s in the field. Contributing authors explore the impact of long-standing trends such as commercialization, digitalization and transnationalization on media and communication governance, highlighting urgent new developments including algorithmization and datafication. Combining theoretical inquiry with cutting-edge empirical analysis, they address governance challenges at the regional, national and global levels to provide a broad view of the social ordering of media systems. Ultimately, the Handbook explores how to protect the public sphere in the digital age and ensure that media organizations and platforms meet democratic expectations." (Publisher description)
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"Using expert interviews and focus groups, this book investigates the theoretical and practical intersection of misinformation and social media hate in contemporary societies. Social Media and Hate argues that these phenomena, and the extreme violence and discrimination they initiate against targete
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d groups, are connected to the socio-political contexts, values and behaviours of users of social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, ShareChat, Instagram and WhatsApp. The argument moves from a theoretical discussion of the practices and consequences of sectarian hatred, through a methodological evaluation of quantitative and qualitative studies on this topic, to four qualitative case studies of social media hate, and its effects on groups, individuals and wider politics in India, Brazil, Myanmar and the UK. The technical, ideological and networked similarities and connections between social media hate against people of African and Asian descent, indigenous communities, Muslims, Dalits, dissenters, feminists, LGBTQIA+ communities, Rohingya and immigrants across the four contexts is highlighted, stressing the need for an equally systematic political response." (Publisher description)
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"Our paper focuses on case studies of artistic, creative and political participation by young feminists and civil society groups in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and the UAE. Central questions uncover the intersecting significance of class, gender and new media in young MENA citizens’ participation; th
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e connections between mediated cultural production and political intervention; and the role of structural barriers for online community and agency. Our conclusions challenge the notion that the democratic ethos of civic participation networks has burgeoned since digitization, and highlights that digital tools and online spaces work more effectively for youth with existing offline economic power and/or cultural capital." (Abstract)
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"This paper explores the interconnections of Hindutva fascist repertoires in India and quasi-orientalist discourses. History and common sense are re-written through audiovisual communications to appeal to one section of a dangerously split Indian public and a neoliberal-touristic sensibility elsewhe
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re. Enlightenment rhetorics of progress, democracy and technological development are apparently embodied by WhatsApp groups, electronic voting machines and laws to protect cows. Voting—as a marker of democratic citizenship—becomes a masquerade protecting a resurgent far right Hindutva (Hindu fascist) regime under the aegis of Narendra Modi and the BJP. Caste Hinduism’s association of cows with deities, and the proscription on meat-eating in certain versions of religious practice, are used as pretexts for unimaginable violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and working class/lower caste Hindus. Violence against those who dissent is rationalised as patriotic. Hindutva’s banal and spectacular audiovisual discourse overwhelms public communication. Its consequences are a form of vigilante citizenship that is marked on the bodies of dead victims and of vigilante publics ready to be mobilised either in ethno-cultural violence or its defence and disavowal. Meanwhile, attracted to India as an enormous market, Western governments and corporations have colluded with the Hindutva regime’s self-promotion as a bastion of development." (Abstract)
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"In development agendas regarding children in low-income communities, both older and emerging media are typically ignored or assumed to have beneficial powers that will redress social and gender inequality. This article builds on a recent rapid evidence review on adolescents’ digital media use and
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development interventions in low- and middle-income countries to examine the contexts of children and adolescents’ access to, and uses of, information and communication technology (ICT). Noting that only a handful of studies heed the significance of social class and gender as major axes of inequality for adolescents, the article scrutinises the gap between the rhetoric of ICT-based empowerment and the realities of ICT-based practice. It calls for a radical rethinking of childhood and development in light of the actual experiences, struggles, and contexts." (Abstract)
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"This rapid evidence review examines adolescents’ access to and use of digital media (especially mobile phones and the internet), together with the associated digital skills and practices, opportunities and risks, and forms of safety mediation, in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The revi
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ew is especially concerned with 10- to 14-year-old girls’ digital media uses, although little evidence specifically addressed this group. It is guided by two overarching research questions: 1. What do scholars and practitioners know about how young adolescents are using digital media (computers, mobile phones and other information and communication technologies, ICTs) and the key challenges these children face? What are the opportunities involved in their use of such media and what are most significant gaps in our knowledge? 2. What evidence is there of local, national and international development programmes’ effective use of digital media to target 10- to 14-year-olds (rather than older adolescents)? What are the most significant gaps in the existing knowledge about these interventions and their outcomes?" (Executive summary)
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"The 59 chapters in this volume, written by leading researchers from around the world, provide scholars and students with an engaging and authoritative survey of current thinking in media and gender research. The Companion includes the following features: With each chapter addressing a distinct, con
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crete set of issues, the volume includes research from around the world to engage readers in a broad array of global and transnational issues and intersectional perspectives. Authors address a series of important questions that have consequences for current and future thinking in the field, including postfeminism, sexual violence, masculinity, media industries, queer identities, video games, digital policy, media activism, sexualization, docusoaps, teen drama, cosmetic surgery, media Islamophobia, sport, telenovelas, news audiences, pornography, and social and mobile media." (Back cover)
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"After years of marginalization by academics in the Western world, Indian cinemas have moved from the periphery to the center of world cinema in a comparatively short space of time. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars in the field, this Handbook looks at the complex reasons for thi
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s remarkable journey. Combining an historical and thematic approach, the Handbook discusses how Indian cinemas need to be understood in their historical unfolding as well as their complex relationships to social, economic, cultural, political, ideological, aesthetic, technical and institutional discourses. The thematic section provides an up-to-date critical narrative on diverse topics such as audience, censorship, film distribution, film industry, diaspora, sexuality, film music and nationalism. The Handbook provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge survey of Indian cinemas, discussing Popular, Parallel/New Wave and Regional cinemas as well as the spectacular rise of Bollywood." (Publisher description)
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