"Media scholars and students, professionals and policy-makers alike will be introduced to the specific problems and perspectives of media accountability in different media systems and journalistic cultures. The status quo of media criticism online across Europe will be a key issue and provide insigh
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ts into the innovative potential of media accountability in the digital age. Looked at from a comparative point of view, the reports hint at the formation of different cultures of media accountability within Europe and its adjacent countries. These media accountability cultures partly overlap with the journalism cultures identified in the well-known model by Hallin & Mancini who differentiate between North Atlantic or Liberal, Mediterranean or Polarised Pluralist, and Northern European or Democratic Corporatist media systems. At the same time, the development of media accountability and transparency shows distinctive features incongruent with established models of journalism cultures." (Back cover)
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"Since the outburst and spread of what was known as the ‘Arab Uprisings’ in 2010, the political and media landscapes in the Middle East region have dramatically changed. The initial hope for democratic change and governance quality improvements has faded, as several regimes in the Middle East ha
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ve strengthened their repressive tactics toward voices deemed critical of governments’ practices, including journalists, bloggers, and activists. The crumbling Arab media scene has also reached an abysmal low, with little to no independence, and public perception of basic freedoms in the region has significantly dropped, as has trust in media and government institutions. This book examines current challenges to media freedom, political participation, and democratisation in the region while reassessing the dynamic relationship between media use and political engagement, amidst a complex political environment accompanied by a rapidly changing digital media landscape." (Publisher description)
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"At a time when uneven power dynamics are high on development actors' agenda, this book will be an important contribution to researchers and practitioners working on innovation in development and civil society. While there is much discussion of localization, decolonization and 'shifting power' in ci
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vil society collaborations in development, the debate thus far centers on the aid system. This book directs attention to CSOs as drivers of development in various contexts that we refer to as the Global South. This book take a transformative stance, reimagining roles, relations and processes. It does so from five complementary angles: (1) Southern CSOs reclaiming the lead, 2) displacement of the North-South dyad, (3) Southern-centred questions, (4) new roles for Northern actors, and (5) new starting points for collaboration. The book relativizes international collaboration, asking INGOs, Northern CSOs, and their donors to follow Southern CSOs' leads, recognizing their contextually geared perspectives, agendas, resources, capacities, and ways of working. Based in 19 empirically grounded chapters, the book also offers an agenda for further research, design, and experimentation. Emphasizing the need to 'Start from the South' this book thus re-imagines and re-centers Civil Society collaborations in development, offering Southern-centred ways of understanding and developing relations, roles, and processes, in theory and practice." (Publisher description)
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"The book [...] examines the dedicated policies targeting the SDGs, as well as political and institutional drivers of synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs in selected key areas – both cross-nationally and in specific country contexts. Their analysis moves beyond the focus on links between SDG
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indicators and targets. Instead, the book takes advantage of recent evidence from the initial implementation phase of the SDGs and each chapter explores the question of which political-institutional prerequisites, governance mechanisms and policy instruments are suited to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs. The findings presented are intended to both inform high-level policy debates and to provide orientation for practitioners working on development cooperation." (Publisher description)
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"Öffentlichkeit ist der zentrale Begriff in Diskussionen über Demokratie und politische Partizipation. Johanna Montanari erweitert den Öffentlichkeitsbegriff postkolonial, indem sie den globalen Süden nicht als defizitären Raum "nachholender Modernisierung" beschreibt, sondern die Anstrengungen
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um die Herstellung von Öffentlichkeit unter eingeschränkt demokratischen Bedingungen ernst nimmt. Anhand der journalistischen Praxis einer englischsprachigen Tageszeitung in Jordanien [Jordan Times] zeigt sie, dass Öffentlichkeit immer kuratiert wird und sich universal verstandene Versprechen der Moderne lokal aneignet. Ihre Ergebnisse fordern zur Reflexion der Auslassungen westlicher Diskurse auf." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa stands as an authoritative and up-to-date resource on the critical debates, research methods and ongoing reflections on how gender and communication intersect with the economic, social, political, and cultu
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ral fabrics of the countries in the MENA region. The handbook comprises thirty chapters written by both established and rising scholars of gender, media, and digital technologies, and will rely on fresh data which seeks to capture the dynamic and complex realities of MENA societies, as well as the tensions and contradictions in the politics of gender and uses of communication technologies. The Handbook is split into six sections: Gender, Identities and Sexualities; The Gender of Politics; Gender and Activism; Gender-Based Violence; Gender and Entrepreneurship; and Gender in Expressive Cultures." (Publisher description)
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"This report provides an assessment of the media landscape in Jordan from the perspective of its audiences. Based on audience research, it examines the key issues emerging around media usage, trust, content, and literacy. It is based on data that was collected throughout June and July 2023; the medi
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a landscape may have changed since the war in Gaza began." (Abstract)
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"Jordan was included as a beneficiary country under the MDP in 2021, responding to a request by the country’s Judicial Training Institute to strengthen the capacities of judicial operators on international standards and issues related to freedom of expression and access to information. This collab
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oration was kicked off on the occasion of the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI), during which the UNESCO Amman Office and the Institute organized a roundtable of experts to highlight the role of judicial actors in ensuring a safe environment for journalists, good governance, and transparency through access to information. Following the event, the MDP also organized a 4-day training workshop for 17 judges on international standards and regional legal frameworks underpinning these principles." (Page 2)
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"1. Digital media overshadowed offline media for several reasons. In Jordan’s case, trust was the primary factor and a reoccurring theme during the focus group discussions. Offline media was often associated with the status quo and therefore, inspired little to no credibility for the participants;
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2. Speed and accessibility were also important factors, and this was reflected even within the digital media scene. Content produced by outlets such as 7ibr was perceived as lengthy and time consuming. Attendees favored quick and straight to the point content; 3. Participants’ preference towards social media indicates the need for a perception of control over the content they consume, a feeling they greatly crave due to their distrust of the government as well as traditional media outlets. However, this is a double-edged sword as it leaves them vulnerable to echo chambers, given the way social media algorithms operate." (Findings, page 6)
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"The online harassment of journalists is a phenomenon which has been on the rise in Europe over the last decade and it affects journalists' working lives. As an expression of mob censorship, online harassment raises questions about how media organisations react to online aggressions targeting their
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journalists, the consequences on the victims’ well-being and on the role of journalism in society. Yet, previous research has shown the lack of support mechanisms provided by journalists’ employers. In this article, we explore the hypothesis that the lack of organisational support towards targeted journalists is partly due to the challenges faced by media managers when trying to make sense of the phenomenon. This article offers a unique viewpoint on how 22 Belgian media managers from five media organisations struggle to define what online harassment is and how to respond to it. In turn, it shows that the vague understanding of what online harassment is seems to favour case-by-case organisational responses. Missing words and unstructured actions related to online harassment impede media managers from addressing online harassment as a collective issue in journalism and its consequences on the democratic debate." (Abstract)
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"The Global Handbook of Media Accountability brings together leading scholars to 'de-Westernize' the academic debate on media accountability and discuss different models of media self-regulation and newsroom transparency around the globe. With examination of the status quo of media accountability in
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forty-four countries worldwide, it offers a theoretically informed, comparative analysis of accountability regimes of different varieties. As such, it constitutes the first interdisciplinary academic framework comparing structures of media accountability across all continents and represents an invaluable basis for further research and policy-making. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of media studies and journalism, mass communication, sociology and political science, as well as policy-makers and practitioners." (Publisher description)
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"This volume provides a comparative analysis of media systems in the Arab world, based on criteria informed by the historical, political, social, and economic factors influencing a country's media. Reaching beyond classical western media system typologies, Arab Media Systems brings together contribu
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tions from experts in the field of media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to provide valuable insights into the heterogeneity of this region's media systems. It focuses on trends in government stances towards media, media ownership models, technological innovation, and the role of transnational mobility in shaping media structure and practices. Each chapter in the volume traces a specific country's media - from Lebanon to Morocco - and assesses its media system in terms of historical roots, political and legal frameworks, media economy and ownership patterns, technology and infrastructure, and social factors (including diversity and equality in gender, age, ethnicities, religions, and languages)." (Publisher description)
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"As for internet use, the percentage of the population with access to internet rose to 89% in 2019 from 48% in 2015. Access to a mobile phone and internet in Jordan has become a matter of choice rather than affordability or accessibility. The Syrian refugee crisis explains the overshooting in mobile
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phone penetration in Jordan during the 2010s. During the past decade, the Jordanian telecommunications industry has transformed from duopoly to oligopoly. Jordan’s three major telecommunications companies together worked to protect their positions in the Jordanian telecoms market. The market saw constant growth and a rapid introduction of new media technologies. Due to these technological advancements, the country has become known in the region as an increasingly influential tech hub [...] In the public sphere, Jordan has experienced an unstable legal and regulatory landscape for the media. The government constantly revises its audiovisual media and publications laws. This places those media networks with a proximity to the state at an advantage, since they have deeper insight into the expectations of the state. Independent media, on the other hand, suffers from the successive governments’ meddling in the foundational laws of the media industry. The work of journalists has been often obstructed by the blocking of hundreds of websites for failing to comply with one or another rendition of the publications law. Many journalists found their employers losing investors and/or funding after the state issued a registration requirement for websites publishing content out of Jordan. Due to strong public pressure, this requirement in the publications law was later revised. Jordan’s journalism sphere had a more difficult decade than the technology field. Restrictions on internet access and high taxes on independent media (compared with tax-exemption status for some media agencies that are close to the government) hurt several media organizations. Stagnation and decline in consumption of print media added to the woes. Jordanian newspapers are enjoying higher readership than ever but also the lowest revenues per reader in history. This is due to declining subscription rates. Jordanian journalists were stunned in the first half of the 2010s to see Jordan’s daily newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yawm end print circulation and shut down operations completely a few years later. Subscriptions to daily newspapers declined by 50% compared to their 2000s levels." (Pages 4-5)
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"This piece interrogates the challenges of advancing media reform initiatives within authoritarian contexts. Based on a case study of the EU-funded Support to Media in Jordan Project—launched in the wake of the Arab Spring—it reveals how the local mediation of internationally sponsored reform ef
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forts allows authoritarian regimes to ingratiate themselves to external partners while blocking meaningful change on the ground." (Introduction)
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"This publication is a collection of a variety of outlooks, recommendations, and input from the participants of the 2020 workshop [for fellows of the CrossCulture Programme (CCP) of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen] and others. On the subject of digital access, CCP alumnus Camilo Olea speaks ab
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out the digital divide in Mexico and how his organisation is providing access to indigenous rural communities. The German NGO Superrr demands an open digital infrastructure and more open-source software for a more inclusive digital sphere. Ali (name changed), a Bangladeshi journalist and CCP alumnus, gives an overview of the current state of free speech in Bangladesh. CCP alumna Hend Kheiralla from Sudan shares her view on the role of social media during the Sudanese Revolution and the impact of the internet shutdown. Having experienced severe discrimination online herself, a CCP alumna from Jordan talks about her experiences and the impact of attacks as well as strategies for dealing with them. Love Storm, a German NGO that focuses on countering hatred online, suggests specific measures we can start using directly to create a safe and inclusive online space for everyone." (Editorial, page 3)
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"In this report, we highlight how privacy and data protection violations by state and non-state actors are compounded by the lack of legal data protection safeguards which would obligate public entities, private companies, and international organizations to respect and adhere to data protection prin
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ciples, empower users to take agency and control over their personal information, and create mechanisms for grievance and redress when such violations occur. We explore these issues and propose safeguards and policy recommendations for those involved in the collection and processing of personal data: governments, private companies, and international aid organizations. We include case studies for Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia. Our goal is not to include an exhaustive list of all cases related to data protection, but to present a few key illustrative cases for each country." (Executive summary, page 3)
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