"The 45 country reports gathered here illustrate the link between the internet and economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). Some of the topics will be familiar to information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) activists: the right to health, education and culture; the socioec
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onomic empowerment of women using the internet; the inclusion of rural and indigenous communities in the information society; and the use of ICT to combat the marginalisation of local languages. Others deal with relatively new areas of exploration, such as using 3D printing technology to preserve cultural heritage, creating participatory community networks to capture an “inventory of things” that enables socioeconomic rights, crowdfunding rights, or the negative impact of algorithms on calculating social benefits. Workers’ rights receive some attention, as does the use of the internet during natural disasters. Ten thematic reports frame the country reports. These deal both with overarching concerns when it comes to ESCRs and the internet – such as institutional frameworks and policy considerations – as well as more specific issues that impact on our rights: the legal justification for online education resources, the plight of migrant domestic workers, the use of digital databases to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy, digital archiving, and the impact of multilateral trade deals on the international human rights framework. The reports highlight the institutional and country-level possibilities and challenges that civil society faces in using the internet to enable ESCRs. They also suggest that in a number of instances, individuals, groups and communities are using the internet to enact their socioeconomic and cultural rights in the face of disinterest, inaction or censure by the state." (Back cover)
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"Internet freedom around the world has declined for the fifth consecutive year, with more governments censoring information of public interest and placing greater demands on the private sector to take down offending content. State authorities have also jailed more users for their online writings, wh
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ile criminal and terrorist groups have made public examples of those who dared to expose their activities online. This was especially evident in the Middle East, where the public flogging of liberal bloggers, life sentences for online critics, and beheadings of internet-based journalists provided a powerful deterrent to the sort of digital organizing that contributed to the Arab Spring. In a new trend, many governments have sought to shift the burden of censorship to private companies and individuals by pressing them to remove content, often resorting to direct blocking only when those measures fail. Local companies are especially vulnerable to the whims of law enforcement agencies and a recent proliferation of repressive laws. But large, international companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have faced similar demands due to their significant popularity and reach." (Page 1)
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"This project is conducted in response to Global Disaster Preparedness Center’s (GDPC) initiative of developing flood hazard preparedness mobile apps in the four target countries (Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam)." (Executive summary)
"Sudden-onset emergencies are typically chaotic, making effective communication between communities, humanitarian responders and governments, whether local or international, challenging. Building on experience from the response to Typhoon Bopha in Mindanao in 2012, the United Nations Office for the
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Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) supported the coordination of communication with disaster-affected communities following Typhoon Haiyan with the deployment of an interagency Communications with Communities (CwC) Coordinator and other CwC field staff. CwC cross-sectoral working groups were set up in the typhoon-affected area, convening local and international NGOs, UN agencies, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, media development actors, local media, mobile operators and local government, with the aim of coordinating two-way communication across the humanitarian response. This article provides a summary of findings from the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network Learning Review on the Typhoon Haiyan response." (Page 1)
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"As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan. Lent covers the nations and regions of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philipp
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ines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides 178 black and white illustrations and detailed information on comics of sixteen countries and regions – their histories, key creators, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. One chapter harkens back to predecessors of comics in Asia, describing scrolls, paintings, books, and puppetry with humorous tinges, primarily in China, India, Indonesia, and Japan." (Publisher website)
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"This report surveys the changing patterns of media consumption in 65 countries across the world, and forecasts how the amount of time people allocate to different media will change between 2014 and 2017. It measures the amount of time spent reading newspapers and magazines, watching television, lis
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tening to the radio, visiting the cinema, using the internet, and viewing outdoor advertising while out of the home. Note that the extent of information available varies considerably from market to market. For some countries we have a full breakdown of consumption figures across all media, with separate figures for desktop and mobile internet, with historical figures back to 2010 and forecasts to 2014, plus monthly breakdowns for consumption across the year, and hourly breakdowns for consumption across the day. For a few countries there is very little research on media consumption trends, so we are able to present only a limited set of figures. We expect the scope of the report to expand in future editions, both by adding new countries and by providing more details for countries where information is currently sparse." (Introduction)
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"Voice—understood as the ability to give an account of oneself and participate in social processes—is increasingly recognized as significant for humanitarian action and disaster recovery. Giving disaster-affected people the opportunity to make their voices heard has the potential to democratize
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humanitarianism and correct the power asymmetries on which it is based. Humanitarian agencies have embraced interactive communication technologies as tools for voice and participation. Drawing on a yearlong ethnography with communities affected by super-Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, this article assesses the potential of new communication technologies for voice. Our findings highlight a disconnect between assumptions about technology present in humanitarian policies and the actual uses of technology by affected populations. The article traces the factors that facilitate, or hinder, participation and finds that communication technologies enable voice only if other parameters, such as a strong civil society, are present. Further, we observe that opportunities for voice are stratified, mapping onto existing social inequalities." (Abstract)
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"This article investigates the intersection of digital and social inequality in the context of disaster recovery. In doing so, the article responds to the optimism present in recent claims about “humanitarian technology” which refers to the empowering uses and applications of interactive technol
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ogies by disaster-affected people. Drawing on a long-term ethnography with affected communities recovering from Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines in 2013 triggering a massive humanitarian response, the article offers a grounded assessment of the role of social media in disaster recovery. In particular, the article focuses on whether any positive consequences associated with digital media use are equally spread among better off and socially marginalized participants. The analysis reveals sharp digital inequalities which map onto existing social inequalities. While some of our already better-off participants have access to a rich media landscape which they are able to navigate often reaping significant benefits, low-income participants are trapped in a delayed recovery with diminished social media opportunities. The fact that some participants are using social media to recover at a rapid pace while others are languishing behind represents a deepening of social inequalities. In this sense, digital inequality can amplify social inequalities leading to a potential “second-order disaster.” This refers to humanly perpetuated disasters that can even surpass the effects of the natural disaster." (Abstract)
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"This report, which has been produced by a group of distinguished journalists and their supporters, examines the broad scope of the crisis. It covers countries where media are on the frontline of tough political battles, such as Egypt and Turkey. In Ukraine, for instance, the practice of paid-for jo
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urnalism is a tool routinely used by politicians at election time. The same is true in India. In other countries, including Nigeria, Philippines, and Colombia the precarious working conditions of news staff provide fertile conditions for corruption and “brown envelopes” or under-the-table cash payments to reporters and editors which are a routine feature of journalistic work. The struggles facing journalists in settled democracies, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark, are less brazen, but no less challenging and in a range of countries across the Western Balkans with a shared and painful history, media corruption hinders aspirations to break free from the legacy of war, censorship and political control during decades of communist rule. The story is of an uphill struggle. Everywhere there is a crisis of confidence inside newsrooms caused by crumbling levels of commitment to ethics, a lowering of the status of journalistic work and a pervasive lack of transparency over advertising, ownership and corporate and political affiliations. Government control over lucrative state advertising, which is often allocated to media according to their political bias, remains widespread. At the same time, the elimination in most countries of the invisible wall separating editorial and advertising has created a surge of so-called “native advertising,” hidden advertorials and paid-for journalism. It was this conflict of interest that plunged the crisis-prone UK press into a new bout of handwringing in February 2015 when Peter Oborne, a leading political journalist, quit his job at the Daily Telegraph accusing the management of censoring stories about HSBC bank, a leading advertiser caught up in a tax scandal. These reports tell essentially the same story of deep cuts in editorial investment, undue pressure on newsrooms, and media increasingly dependent upon atypical models of ownership in which media have become the trophy possessions of powerful figures and institutions in pursuit of wider corporate and political objectives." (Introduction, page iii-iv)
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"This case study examines the current state of community journalism in the Philippines. This paper builds from previous studies, especially those by Filipino community journalism scholar Crispin Maslog, on the community press in the Philippines. The focus of this paper is the community newspaper and
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online community news websites. This case study includes interviews with leading stakeholders in the community press sector of the country. Pertinent documents surrounding the community press were collected and analysed." (Abstract)
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"Based on an extensive ethnographic study of television and audiences in class-divided Philippines, this is the first book to take a bottom-up approach in considering how people respond to images and narratives of suffering and poverty on television. Arguing for an anthropological ethics of media, t
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his book challenges existing work in media studies and sociology that focuses solely on textual analysis and philosophical approaches to the question of representing vulnerable others. Current questions in media ethics, such as whether to portray sufferers as humane and empowered individuals or show them ‘at their worst’ have so far used textual and visual analyses to convey the researcher’s own moral position on the matter. In contrast, this book, inspired by the anthropology of moralities, accounts for the different interpretations and moral positions of audiences, who are positioned in various degrees of social and moral proximity to those they see and hear on television. Winner of the 2016 Philippine Social Science Council Excellence in Research Award." (Publisher description)
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"This is a book about free speech narratives. Stories about how imagination and rational thinking in wildly different cultures capture, imagine, and conceptualize what freedom of speech means. 1989 and 2011 are only two recent (in historic perspective) turning points when freedom of speech and freed
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om of the press emerged, or at least powerful efforts were made to support its emergence, although disheartening backlashes followed in several countries. This book also tells many other free speech narratives that emerged, or evolved outside the frames of 1989 and 2011, also with several troublesome repercussions. The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the year of largely velvet revolutions (in the words of Vaclav Havel), brought freedom of speech to Central Europe and Eastern Europe. It also increased the hope that freedom of speech and democracy can prevail in more and more countries on the earth. This book examines, in some historic perspective, to what extent this hope has become reality since and prior to 1989, also in light of the Arab revolutions of 2011." (Introduction, page 1)
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"A Moving Faith captures the dynamic shift of Christianity to the South and portrays a global movement that promises prosperity, healing, empowerment, and gender equality by invoking neo-Pentecostal and Charismatic resources. It postulates that neither North America nor Europe is the current center
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of the Christian faith. The book provides a detailed overview of how migration of Christians from the South enriches the North, for instance, Pope Francis brings newness, freshness, and the vigor characteristic of the South. While describing Christianity’s growth in the South, it suggests that, in fact, there is no center for this global faith. It explores this great move of Christianity by focusing on representative mega churches in South Korea, Brazil, Peru, Ghana, Nigeria, Australia, India, and the Philippines." (Publisher description)
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"Historical anthropologist Deirdre de la Cruz offers a detailed examination of several appearances and miracles of the Virgin Mary in the Philippines from materials and sites ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. By analyzing the effects of the mass media on the perception and prol
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iferation of apparition phenomena, de la Cruz charts the intriguing emergence of new voices in the Philippines that are broadcasting Marian discourse globally. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and hitherto unexplored archives in the Philippines, the United States, and Spain, Mother Figured documents the conditions of Marian devotion's modern development and tracks how it has transformed Filipinos' social and political role within the greater Catholic world." (Back cover)
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"This ‘Investigation’ on Pastoral Communication programs of seven Seminaries or Theological Schools in Metro Manila reflects the situation and challenges for priestly formation in this field. The results are consolidated with some 230 questionnaires from participating seminarians and interviews
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with their ‘formators’. They are also placed into the general teachings and requirements of the Church for priestly formation. The study originates from the Pastoral Communication Program of the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas (UST), Manila. It should also be applicable to other places and countries in Asia." (Publisher description)
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