"With a gradual return to normalcy following the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a dramatic resurgence of internet shutdowns in 2021. During this year, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documented at least 182 internet shutdown incidents around the world in 34 countries, as com
...
pared to at least 159 shutdowns in 29 countries in 2020. We saw a global increase of 23 shutdowns from 2020 to 2021. Following trends we’ve seen developing for years, in 2021 governments imposed both prolonged and increasingly targeted internet shutdowns, and relied on many of the same justifications for deploying these inherently disproportionate and drastic measures. Authorities in many countries imposed shutdowns in transparent efforts to silence critics and suppress dissent. Others wielded shutdowns to control the flow of information during elections and active conflict and war, including coups. In some cases, countries persisted in the harmful practice of disrupting internet access during school exams, a blunt method to discourage cheating. India was responsible for 106 incidents of shutdowns documented in 2021, making it the world’s biggest offender for the fourth consecutive year. After India, Myanmar imposed the highest total number of shutdowns in 2021, with 15 disruptions, followed by Sudan and Iran with five shutdowns in each country. Over the past five years, our documentation shows that authorities have increasingly moved to disrupt the internet during events that affect the country’s political situation, such as elections, protests, including war crimes and acts of genocide. They obstruct humanitarian aid, and hinder journalism and the documentation of rights violations." (Pages 3-4)
more
"This electronic publication about smart education strategies for building the resilience of education and training systems in the postpandemic environment provides a framework to develop appropriate policy and strategy in existing and emerging forms of schooling, higher education, technical and voc
...
ational education, and training (TVET), adult education and lifelong learning, including formal, nonformal and informal educational environments. While the discussion takes a historical view, it is also forward-looking and future-oriented. It hopes to contribute to ongoing, evolving conversations and debates on appropriate smart education policy development. The publication reviews the status of smart education policies in 10 countries. It includes 15 case studies within the six policy themes: infrastructure, curriculum and pedagogy, digital education resources and platforms, skills and competencies, governance, management and administration, and partnership. A policy template and a mechanism for monitoring and evaluating smart education policy implementation included in the publication would help the UNESCO Member States adopt smart education policies and strategies." (Back cover)
more
"1. Women’s uptake of mobile internet in lowand middle-income countries continues to increase, but the rate of adoption has slowed. Across low- and middle-income countries, 60 per cent of women now use mobile internet. Only 59 million additional women in low-and middle-income countries started usi
...
ng mobile internet in 2021 compared to 110 million in 2020. This is significant since mobile remains the primary way most people access the internet, especially women. 2. The mobile internet gender gap had been reducing, but progress has stalled. Across low- and middle-income countries, women are now 16 per cent less likely than men to use mobile internet, which translates into 264 million fewer women than men. By comparison, the mobile internet gender gap in low- and middle-income countries was 25 per cent in 2017 and 15 per cent in 2020. The gender gap is widest in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and has remained relatively unchanged in all regions since 2017 except South Asia. In South Asia, the mobile internet gender gap had narrowed significantly, from 67 per cent in 2017 to 36 per cent in 2020, but has now widened to 41 per cent. This is due to continued increase in mobile internet adoption among men but no notable increase among women, particularly in India where men’s mobile internet use increased from 45 per cent to 51 per cent while women’s has remained flat at 30 per cent. 3. The gender gap in smartphone ownership has widened slightly. Over the past five years, the gender gap in smartphone ownership had been reducing year on year across low- and middle-income countries, from 20 per cent in 2017 to 16 per cent in 2020. Women are now 18 per cent less likely than men to own a smartphone, which translates into 315 million fewer women than men owning a smartphone. This year’s increase has been driven by an increase in the smartphone gender gap in South Asia, as well as a continued increase in the smartphone gender gap in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, once women own a smartphone, their awareness and use of mobile internet is almost on par with men [...]" (Key findings)
more
"The first handbook on global media ethics; provides a valuable resource for teaching media ethics in a global era; addresses all major approaches to global media ethics; contains contributions by leading, internationally recognized authors in the field of media ethics." (Publisher description)
"This report is the product of an effort to understand the scale and scope of “transnational repression,” in which governments reach across national borders to silence dissent among their diaspora and exile communities. Freedom House assembled cases of transnational repression from public source
...
s, including UN and government documents, human rights reports, and credible news outlets, in order to generate a detailed picture of this global phenomenon.
The project compiled a catalogue of 608 direct, physical cases of transnational repression since 2014. In each incident, the origin country’s authorities physically reached an individual living abroad, whether through detention, assault, physical intimidation, unlawful deportation, rendition, or suspected assassination. The list includes 31 origin states conducting physical transnational repression in 79 host countries. This total is certainly only partial; hundreds of other physical cases that lacked sufficient documentation, especially detentions and unlawful deportations, are not included in Freedom House’s count. Nevertheless, even this conservative enumeration shows that what often appear to be isolated incidents—an assassination here, a kidnapping there—in fact represent a pernicious and pervasive threat to human freedom and security.
Moreover, physical transnational repression is only the tip of the iceberg. The consequences of each physical attack ripple out into a larger community. And beyond the physical cases compiled for this report are the much more widespread tactics of “everyday” transnational repression: digital threats, spyware, and coercion by proxy, such as the imprisonment of exiles’ families. For millions of people around the world, transnational repression has become not an exceptional tool, but a common and institutionalized practice used by dozens of regimes to control people outside their borders." (Executive summary)
more
"This study examines whether and how public media systems contribute to the health of democracies in 33 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, the Middle East, Latin America, and South America. We gather national economic data and public media funding levels, audience shares, and regulato
...
ry data, primarily for 2018 and 2019 but in some cases earlier, due to lack of available data. We then assess correlations with strength of democracy indices and extend Hallin and Mancini's typology of North American and European media systems through hierarchical cluster analysis of these 33 countries. We find five models of public media systems around the world, ranging from “state-administered” systems with low levels of independence (Botswana and Tunisia) to systems aligning with Hallin and Mancini's “Democratic Corporatist” model, with strong and secure (multiyear) funding, large audience shares, and strong regulatory protection for their independence. In between, we identify three mixed models: a “Liberal-Pluralist” model, a “Direct Funding” model, and a “Commercial–Public” model. Correlations and cluster analyses show that high levels of secure funding for public media systems and strong structural protections for the political and economic independence of those systems are consistently and positively correlated with healthy democracies." (Abstract)
more
"Secularization has accelerated. From 1981 to 2007, most countries became more religious, but from 2007 to 2020, the overwhelming majority became less religious. For centuries, all major religions encouraged norms that limit women to producing as many children as possible and discourage any sexual b
...
ehavior not linked with reproduction. These norms were needed when facing high infant mortality and low life expectancy but require suppressing strong drives, and are rapidly eroding. These norms are so strongly linked with religion that abandoning them undermines religiosity. Religion became pervasive because it was conducive to survival, encouraged sharing when there was no social security system, and it is conducive to mental health and coping with insecure conditions. People need coherent belief systems, but religion is declining. What comes next? The Nordic countries have consistently been at the cutting edge of cultural change. Protestantism left an enduring imprint, but the 20th Century welfare added universal health coverage, high levels of state support for education, welfare spending, child care, pensions and an ethos of social solidarity. These countries are also characterized by rapidly declining religiosity. Does this portend corruption and nihilism? Apparently not. These countries lead the world on numerous indicators of a well-functioning society, including economic equality, gender equality, low homicide rates, subjective well-being, environmental protection and democracy. They have become less religious, but their people have high levels of interpersonal trust, tolerance, honesty, social solidarity and commitment to democratic norms." (Publisher description)
more
"We can see that the number of countries with concentrated foreign media strategies has increased substantially and that their range of activities and strategies is substantial. Also visible is a decline in spending from Western nations (with countries Austria, Canada, and the Neth-erlands severely
...
cutting services) while non-Western nations (like Turkey, Qatar, and China) increase their investments. Despite massive financial support from new ECP players, foreign broadcasters are far from a panacea to achieve global influence. In reality, this spending often happens without a dedicated and localized strategy. Indeed, “the risk of expanding initiatives in fields such as international broadcasting and film co-productions with little attention being given to reception contexts of cross-cultural communications is that nation states will be committing significant resources to these cultural initiatives to little tangible effect, as has arguably been occurring with the international expansion of CCTV services by the Chinese government over the last decade, at least in the advanced industrial nations” (Flew 2016, page 291). Even among resurgent powers, strategies vary. Compared to Russia, China employs a more diffuse strategy to increase understanding and improve China’s image, while also limiting the inflow of information. By contrast, Russia mainly targets Western narratives without expending much effort to portray Russia itself in a positive light and has done relatively little to restrict information flow (although it has considered targeting US social media). Turkey’s approach is somewhat of a mix of the two. As countries experiment with different foreign media strategies, we can expect the range of approaches to increase in the coming years, with some countries adopting a “trial and error” method as particular methods succeed or fail." (Pages 12-13)
more
"This book lays out the history of entertainment-education and discusses the boundaries of what counts as entertainment-education and narrative persuasion, includes both authors who work within academia and authors who are practitioners, and chapters focusing on developed and developing countries; d
...
raws upon communication principles and theory but prioritizes actionable lessons for how entertainment-education actually works." (Publisher description)
more
"One of the main challenges for fact-checkers seems to be to better and more effectively reach their audience. That means, on the one hand, improved skills and capacity to reach out to a specific group of followers, but also techniques to more efficiently use social media as an audience generation t
...
ool. Effective use of social media turns out to be a challenge of high importance for African fact-checking organizations in our sample in particular, which have thus far been slow in building a strong follower base on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Credibility has also been mentioned as a major challenge for factchecking groups, with 22 out of 30 groups that responded in our poll saying that the challenge of gaining or maintaining credibility is “very important” or “fairly important.” Achieving a higher impact is an important challenge for many factchecking organizations as they seek methods that would help them to both measure and increase their impact. All African fact-checking groups included in our research indicated the challenge of impact to be “very important.” Impact of fact-checking remains a research gap as there is no solid evidence to understand how effective fact-checking is." (Key findings)
more
"FIPP and paywall market leaders CeleraOne have carried out a survey to gauge the global state of affairs when it comes to digital subscription offerings by leading media companies in different countries. The results gathered from 95 publishers in 11 nations – Argentina, Canada, Finland, France, G
...
ermany, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S. - give an important insight into how paywalls and subscribers are evolving. The benchmark report arrives at a pivotal moment in the evolution of paywall strategies. While Covid-19 has resulted in a wave of digital subscriptions as the public went looking for information about the crisis, the question is whether the post-Covid period will have the opposite effect. “We are entering an interesting period because most of the people who subscribed did so because they needed firsthand information about Covid in their local area, or just needed entertainment in times of social distancing,” says York Walterscheid, Managing Director of CeleraOne. “The question now becomes, how do you keep such a good conversion rate? Most of the publishers need to be very careful in saying: ‘My strategy worked out and I can now rest on my laurels.’ It is crucial for publishers to look at their post-Covid strategy now." (Introduction, page 4-5)
more
"An estimated 4.9 billion people are using the Internet in 2021, according to latest estimates in this 2021 edition of Measuring Digital Development: Facts and figures. That means that roughly 63 per cent of the world’s population is now online – an increase of 17 per cent – with almost 800 mi
...
llion people estimated to have come online since 2019. Internet penetration increased more than 20 per cent on average in Africa, in Asia and the Pacific, and in the UN-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs). With most of the 17 Global Goals thrust sharply off-track by the force of the emergency, the pandemic has highlighted – and exacerbated – the crippling cost of digital exclusion. Achieving universal meaningful connectivity has become a matter of the utmost urgency if we are to meet the SDGs by the end of the decade. We cannot close the digital divide if we cannot measure it. And we cannot connect the unconnected if we do not know who they are, where they live, and why they remain offline – nor can we measure the success of our policies to bridge the gap . While the access divide is close to being bridged, with 95 per cent of the world’s population now living within range of a mobile broadband network, important blind spots remain. Close to 30 per cent of Africa’s rural population still lacks mobile broadband coverage. And even though the vast majority of the world’s people could access the Internet through mobile broadband, less than two thirds actually do. The statistics reveal a connectivity ‘grand canyon’ separating the digitally empowered from the digitally excluded, with 96 per cent of the 2.9 billion still offline living in the developing world. Drilling down to country level also affords a more nuanced picture. Location plays a big part: our figures reveal that the share of Internet users in urban areas is twice as high as in rural areas. There is also a generational gap – 71 per cent of the world’s population aged 15-24 is using the Internet, compared with 57 per cent of all other age groups. And gender remains a factor: globally, 62 per cent of men are using the Internet compared with 57 per cent of women. While that digital gender divide has been narrowing across all regions, women remain digitally marginalized in many of the world’s poorest countries, where online access could potentially have its most powerful effect." (Foreword)
more
"The courageous acts of whistleblowing that inspired the world over the past few years have changed our perception of surveillance and control in today's information society. But what are the wider effects of whistleblowing as an act of dissent on politics, society, and the arts? How does it contrib
...
ute to new courses of action, digital tools, and contents? This urgent intervention based on the work of Berlin's Disruption Network Lab examines this growing phenomenon, offering interdisciplinary pathways to empower the public by investigating whistleblowing as a developing political practice that has the ability to provoke change from within." (Publisher description)
more
"Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) bring a wide range of skill sets to the problem of digital disinformation. Some organizations focus on digital media literacy and education; others engage in advocacy and policy work. Another segment has developed expertise in fact-checking and verification. Other
...
organizations have developed refined technical skills for extracting and analyzing data from social media platforms. This research yielded several clear observations about the state of CSO responses to disinformation and, in turn, suggests several recommendations for paths forward. • Prioritize Skill Diffusion and Knowledge Transfer. Civil society organizations seeking funding for counter-disinformation initiatives should emphasize the importance of skill diffusion and knowledge-transfer initiatives. The siloed nature of disinformation research points to a growing need to blend technical expertise with deep cultural and political knowledge. • CSO researchers lack sufficient access to social media data. Survey respondents identified insufficient access to data as a challenge. Sometimes data are not made available to CSOs; in other instances, data are made available in formats that are not workable for meaningful research purposes. Unequal access to the data that private companies do provide can exacerbate regional inequities, and the nature of data sharing by social media platforms can unduly shape the space for inquiry by civil society and other researchers. Funders, platforms, and other key actors should develop approaches that provide more consistent, inclusive data access to CSOs. • Duplicative programming hampers innovation. CSOs drawing on similar tools, approaches, and techniques to meet similar goals pointed to three main factors preventing more specialized, innovative initiatives: lack of coordination, lack of specific expertise, and lack of flexible funding. Community building and collaboration among relevant organizations deserve more investment, as do initiatives that partner larger, established organizations with smaller or growing ones, or pool efforts, skill sets, and expertise to encourage diverse research by design rather than by coincidence. • Relationships with tech platforms vary across regions. Surveyed CSOs often held simultaneously skeptical and positive opinions about their relationships with social media companies. Some receive preferential access to data and even funding for their work (raising concerns about independence), while others report a lack of responsiveness from company representatives. In the Global South and Eastern Europe, many CSOs expressed concern that platforms failed to meaningfully engage with them on issues of critical concern. • More flexible funding and more diverse research are both necessary. To encourage greater platform accountability across varied geographic contexts, CSOs and their funders should draw on the perspectives of specific, under-analyzed communities." (Executive summary, page 3-4)
more
"Today, a variety of gender-based threats and discrimination continue to characterize journalism. Both male and female journalists are prone to online and offline threats, casual stereotypes in their routine work, and discrimination (especially in terms of job opportunities, promotion, and pay-scale
...
). Working in a safe and non-discriminatory environment is the right of all journalists, regardless of their gender. The Handbook of Research on Discrimination, Gender Disparity, and Safety Risks in Journalism is a critical reference book that highlights equal rights in journalism to ensure the safety of women and men. The book investigates the level and nature of threats, both online and offline, faced by journalists as well as gender discrimination in journalism. Best practices and examples that can promote a safe working environment and gender equality in journalism are also presented. Highlighting important themes such as online harassment, sexism, and gender-based violence, this book is ideal for journalists, reporters, media organizations, professionals, researchers, academicians, and students working or studying in the fields of journalism, media and communications, human rights, and women's studies." (Publisher description)
more
"The content of the book is organized into four sections. The first three sections are essays recounting real-world experiences of pastoral agents. These essays are roughly divided into three sub-groups. The first group of essays focus on the parish setting and the ministries that each parish attemp
...
ted to implement in response to the crisis. The second group of essays highlight the education and formation ministry, which includes both catechism teaching and other educational settings such as theology schools and formation houses. The third group of essays primarily depict outreach ministries such as those with the poor, migrants, and other marginalized groups. The pastoral workers carrying out these ministries may do so in context of a parish/diocesan setting or as part of a nonparochial program. The final section, comprised of five essays are responses to the experiences presented in the previous three sections. The aim of this section is to dialogue with the experiences recounted in the essays originating from a variety of countries around the world. Some of the issues that the writers of the responses were asked to consider include presenting theological insights gained from these experiences; lessons to be learned from what has been shared; the understanding of “pastoral creativity” in the contemporary world; and implications that these experiences hold for the post-pandemic Church." (Preface, page viii-ix)
more
"This eBook provides a follow-up conversation with key contributors from The Distanced Church, published in April 2020, which explored how church leaders were responding and adapting to the need move their traditional services online during the first lockdown of the covid-19 pandemic. Revisiting the
...
Distanced Church offers not only a "then and now" reflection on how pastors and scholar see the evolving relationship between the church and digital media one year later after the global migration of the church online. It also provides a unique look into the long term implications of these technology choices and experimentation on the church, how leaders and scholars are reflecting on the present-future of digital ministry, and the areas in need of further theological reflection due to these changes." (Abstract)
more
"Digital technologies have enabled the spread of all kinds of information, displacing traditional formats of usually more carefully curated information such as encyclopaedias and newspapers. The massive information flow of the digital era demands that readers be able to distinguish between fact and
...
opinion. Readers must learn strategies to detect biased information and malicious content like fake news and phishing emails. What the PISA 21st-Century readers report reveals is that students’ access to digital technologies and training on how to use them greatly vary between countries and students’ socio-economic profiles. This report explores how 15-year-old students are developing reading skills to navigate the technology-rich 21st century. It sheds light on potential ways to strengthen students’ capacity to navigate the new world of information. It highlights how countries need to redouble their efforts to combat emerging digital divides. It also explores what teachers can do to help students navigate ambiguity and manage complexity." (Publisher description)
more