"Ammann hat den Aufstieg der sozialen Medien von Anfang an begleitet und zieht Bilanz: Sie bieten auf der einen Seite große Chancen für die Demokratie. Die effektive Nachbarschaftshilfe während der Pandemie oder der immense Erfolg von #fridaysforfuture und #blacklivesmatter basieren auf der Reich
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weite von Social Media. Auf der anderen Seite unterminieren sie aber zugleich die demokratischen Grundlagen: durch die Verbreitung von Fake News und Verschwörungstheorien, vor allem aber auch, weil die global agierenden Betreiber sich nur an ihre eigenen Regeln halten. Was dem Einzelnen Freiheit verspricht, begünstigt eine manipulative Gegenöffentlichkeit, die Falschmeldungen und Hass verbreitet. Ammann hat zahllose Beispiele und Fakten zusammengetragen, die deutlich machen: Der Kampf um unser politisches System hat bereits begonnen – aber die Machtprobe ist noch lange nicht entschieden." (Buchrücken)
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"This book, part of the BEA Electronic Media Research Series, brings together top scholars researching media literacy and lays out the current state of the field in areas such as propaganda, news, participatory culture, representation, education, social/environmental justice, and civic engagement. T
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he field of media literacy continues to undergo changes and challenges as audiences are reconceptualized and reconfigured, media industries are transformed and replaced, and the production of media texts is available to anyone with a smartphone. The book provides an overview of these. It offers readers specific examples and recommendations to help others as they develop their own teaching and research agendas." (Publisher description)
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"Preaching has been central to Muslim communities throughout the centuries. The liturgical Friday sermon is a prime example, although other genres that are less commonly known also serve important functions. This book addresses the ways in which Muslims relate various forms of religious oratory to a
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uthoritative tradition in 21st-century Islamic practice, while striving to adapt to local contexts and the changing circumstances of politics, media and society. This is the first book of its kind to look at homiletics beyond a specific country focus. Taking into consideration the historical developments of Muslim preaching, it offers a collection of thoroughly contextualised case studies of oratory in Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Sweden and the USA. The analyses presented here show shared emphasis on struggles for legitimacy, efforts to speak authoritatively, as well as discursive opportunities and constraints." (Publisher description)
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"Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories provides a comprehensive overview of conspiracy theories as an important social, cultural and political phenomenon in contemporary life. This handbook provides the most complete analysis of the phenomenon
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to date. It analyses conspiracy theories from a variety of perspectives, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It maps out the key debates, and includes chapters on the historical origins of conspiracy theories, as well as their political significance in a broad range of countries and regions. Other chapters consider the psychology and the sociology of conspiracy beliefs, in addition to their changing cultural forms, functions and modes of transmission. This handbook examines where conspiracy theories come from, who believes in them and what their consequences are." (Publisher description)
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"An increasing number of media platforms - from newspapers and television to Internet social media networks - are the major providers of indispensable information about the natural world and environmental risk. Despite the dramatic changes in the news industry that have tended to reduce the number o
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f full-time newspaper reporters, environmental journalists remain key to bringing stories to light across the globe. With contributions from across the world broken down into five key regions - the United States of America, Europe and Russia, Asia and Australia, Africa and the Middle East, and South America - this book provides support for today's environment reporters, the providers of essential news in the 21st century." (Publisher description)
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"Offering a collection of invited contributions from scholars across the world, the volume is structured in seven parts, each exploring a particular aspect of local media and journalism that provide the framework to bring together and consolidate the latest research and theorisations from the field,
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and fresh understandings of local media from a comparative perspective and within a global context. Addressing the significant changes local media and journalism has undergone in the last decade, the companion explores the history, politics, ethics and contents of local media, as well as delving deeper into the business and practices that affect not only the journalists and media-makers involved, but consumers as well. For students and researchers in the fields of journalism studies, journalism education, cultural studies and media and communications programmes, this is the comprehensive guide to local media and journalism." (Publisher description)
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"This book [...] examines the shift from a propositional to a therapeutic approach to faith from a sociological standpoint. The book covers two research projects in particular: the Twitter Gospels and Online Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It explores the data as it relates to Abby Day's concept of pe
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rformative belief, picking up on Mia Lövheim's challenge to see how this concept works out in digital culture and social media. It also compares the data to various construals of contemporary approaches to faith performative faith including Christian Smith's concept of 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism'. Other research is also compared to the findings of these projects, including a micro-project on Celebrities and the Bible, to give a wider perspective on these issues in both the UK and the US." (Publisher description)
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"Late in the twentieth century, the United States embraced democracy promotion as a foreign policy priority, a central component of which involved allocating democracy aid to governments, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations around the world to support and encourage democratization.
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Nonetheless, as a scarce resource, democracy assistance is allocated selectively: some states receive substantial commitments while others receive none. As previous studies have concluded, democracy aid allocations are, in part, strategic bets placed on the likelihood of progress toward and consolidation of democracy, as donors consider cues that identify situations where democracy aid is likely to be most successful. We introduce the role of media coverage as a key factor in democracy aid allocations and argue that a shift toward democracy within a potential recipient state interacts with media attention to that state to generate cues for aid allocators. To gauge the agenda-setting and cueing effects of media coverage on democracy aid allocations, we examine US democracy assistance from 1975 to 2010, weighing the impact of media attention, democratic openings, and other factors related to recipient characteristics and US political, strategic, economic, and ideational interests on democracy assistance. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings." (Abstract)
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"This guide is meant to serve as a practical resource for funders who want to understand where to start. Informed by feedback from our network, it represents a synthesis of the past seven years of work we’ve done in the impact space, and includes examples of successful media impact evaluation, too
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ls and frameworks for assessment, and the challenges of defining and measuring impact in a rapidly-shifting media landscape. Our years of research have led us to four key insights: 1. There are many different frameworks for measuring media impact for different areas of practice. 2. Funders should be mindful of power dynamics, and thoughtful in determining appropriate impact strategies with their grantees. 3. Digital analytics tools provide a wealth of useful data, but grantees require financial and logistical support in implementing them. 4. There are opportunities for funders to collaborate with each other to share best practices and increase collective impact." (Executive summary)
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"Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Central and Eastern European states, however, have be
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en aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself." (Publisher description)
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"In this report, we use survey data collected in late March and early April 2020 to document and understand how people in six countries (Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and the US) accessed news and information about COVID-19 in the early stages of the global pandemic, how they rate
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the trustworthiness of the different sources and platforms they rely on, how much misinformation they say they encounter, and their knowledge of and responses to the coronavirus crisis. We show that news use is up across all six countries, and most people in most countries are using either social media, search engines, video sites, and messaging applications (or combinations of these) to get news and information about coronavirus. In all six countries, people with low levels of formal education are much less likely to say that they rely on news organisations for news and information about coronavirus, and more likely to rely on social media and messaging applications. In Argentina, South Korea, Spain, and the US, young people are much more likely to rely on social media, and in Germany, the UK, and the US, to rely on messaging applications groups." (Executive summary)
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"This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did
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it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told." (Publisher description)
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"This report was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine women’s representation in COVID-19/coronavirus newsgathering and news coverage in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the US. It is rooted in a computational news content analysis of 11,913 publications an
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d 1.9 million stories between 1st March and 15th April 2020 undertaken by Media Ecosystems Analysis Group; an in-depth qualitative portrayal analysis of 175 highly ranked COVID-19/coronavirus stories across the six countries; quantitative analysis of eight public-facing bespoke Google surveys, as well as multi-country secondary surveys; a pronoun content analysis of COVID-19 headlines; story frames analyses using Google’s news search engine, the Internet TV News Archive in 2020 and the GDELT Project global online news archive for 2017 to 2020; and interrogation of a number of global statistical databases [...] The report has examined the news coverage of the COVID-19/coronavirus story through the lenses of three indicators of gender equality: women as sources of news expertise; news stories leading with women protagonists; and coverage of gender equality issues. The insights from the report have led to the creation of 21 recommendations which aim to support news providers who wish to amplify the substantially muted voices of women in news coverage of the COVID19/coronavirus story. The report has uncovered a substantial bias towards men’s perspectives in the newsgathering and news coverage of this pandemic across both the global north (the UK and US) and the global south (India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa). This bias operates against a backdrop of women’s effective political invisibility within the COVID-19-related decision-making process in the countries analyzed and the unique socioeconomic, health and psychological challenges that women face globally. Every individual woman’s voice in the news on COVID19 is drowned out by the voices of at least three, four, or five men. The women who are given a platform in the COVID-19/coronavirus story are rarely portrayed as authoritative experts or as empowered individuals but more frequently as sources of personal opinion or as victims/people affected by the disease." (Executive summary)
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"Desinformation ist eine Konstante der politischen Kommunikation. Doch mit der Wahl Donald Trumps zum Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten und der Brexit-Abstimmung in Großbritannien erhielten bewusst lancierte Falschnachrichten eine neue gesellschaftliche Bedeutung. Denn nun wurde sichtbar, welche
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Wirkungen Falschmeldungen für demokratische Systeme haben. Der Band geht diesem Phänomen auf den Grund, indem er herausarbeitet, was “Fake News” sind. Er geht der Frage nach, wie, warum und von wem sie eingesetzt werden und reflektiert, was man gesellschaftlich und persönlich dagegen tun kann. Das Buch gibt zu diesem Zweck einen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand der empirischen Forschung zu Fake News und Desinformation, besonders mit Blick auf deren Verbreitung, Erkennbarkeit und Wirksamkeit. Zugleich diskutiert er in einer Mischung aus Essays, theoretischen Erörterungen und empirischen Studien die Herausforderungen von Desinformation für unsere Gesellschaft und beleuchtet so das Thema von allen Seiten." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Trust in news has eroded worldwide. According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2020, fewer than four in ten people (38%) across 40 markets say they typically trust most news. While trust has fallen by double digit margins in recent years in many places, including Brazil and the Unit
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ed Kingdom, in other countries more stable overall trends conceal stark and growing partisan divides. Why is trust eroding, how does it play out across different contexts and different groups, what are the implications, and what might be done about it? These are the organising questions behind the Trust in News Project. This report is the first of many we will publish from the project over the next three years. Because trust is a relationship between trustors and trustees, we anticipate focusing primarily on audiences and the way they think about trust, but we begin the project by taking stock of how those who study journalism and those who practice it think about the subject [...] We focus on media environments in four democracies – Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries encompass both the Global South and North, with a range of cultural heterogeneity and political practices that vary in their partisan and populist tendencies. For our purposes, one of the most important differences across these countries is in how audiences have integrated digital and social media practices into how they consume news. Whereas public social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have rapidly become key conduits of information in democracies worldwide, many of those we interviewed pointed to the popularity of encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp, specifically in Brazil and India, which have combined with deficits in digital literacy to serve as a ‘breeding ground’ for misinformation and disinformation (Chakrabarti et al. 2018). As Irineu Machado, head of content delivery at UOL (Brazil), told us, audiences increasingly ‘distrust organisations who traditionally’ cover news and ‘distrust information in general’, and some rely not just on public social networking sites but also private groups and messaging applications [...] This report is divided into two main sections. First, we outline important lessons from existing research and practitioners’ observations on trust in news. Second, we identify outstanding questions that we expect will guide our project in the years ahead." (Introduction)
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"This report, which was developed in consultation with leading experts in social and behavioral sciences and public health, outlines evidence-informed communication strategies in support of national COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts across federal agencies and their state and local partners. The
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recommendations put forth are actionable and responsive to the unique challenges faced by the United States in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report relies on a few foundational practices of effective health communication, namely coordinated communication and consistent messaging, trust building through partnerships, consideration of different health literacy levels in the population, and importantly, prioritizing equity in all aspects of communication. We build on these foundational principles to outline three intersecting considerations for communication efforts (What is being communicated, Who is the target of the message, and How the message is communicated), along with concrete recommendations for targeted and tailored communication that responds to the needs and perspectives of the intended audience." (Executive summary)
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"[This publication] is a senior project in Religious Studies that explores the conditions, both historical and clinical, which led to the popularity of the guided meditation app Headspace, and the cultural attitudes that surround mindfulness meditation in America." (Publisher description)
"The authors engage with a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives in order to explore the actions of a vigilant digital audience — denunciation, shaming, doxing — and to consider the role of the press and other public figures in supporting or contesting these activities. In turn, the volume il
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luminates several tensions underlying these justice seeking activities — from their capacity to reproduce categorical forms of discrimination, to the diverse motivations of the wider audiences who participate in vigilant denunciations. This timely volume presents thoughtful case studies drawn both from high-profile Anglo-American contexts, and from developments in regions that have received less coverage in English-language scholarship [China, Morocco, Russia and Slovenia]. It is distinctive in its focus on the contested boundary between policing and entertainment, and on the various contexts in which the desire to seek retribution converges with the desire to consume entertainment." (Back cover)
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"The guide aims to make what community engagement practitioners do visible and demonstrate why it matters. We’re not walking Rolodexes for reporters to tap, nor are we party planners or social media administrators. We create spaces and processes for the people we want to serve to articulate their
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experiences and collaborate with our newsrooms to report them. This takes more time and effort than you might think. It involves a lot of unglamorous labor, such as coordinating meetings, taking and distributing notes, following up with people about tasks, facilitating group processes, and developing partnerships — skill sets that are not often celebrated in newsroom culture, but whose absence is felt acutely when they are missing. This guide is about what engagement looks like and what it takes to do it well. My hope is that it fuels colleagues’ efforts nationwide who struggle for recognition and support in newsroom workflows, as well as helps editors and reporters realize that engagement is not separate from editorial, but plays a fundamental role in crafting relevant, powerful, and nuanced journalism." (Page 5)
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