"Through carefully curated essays, Salazkina and Fibla-Gutiérrez bring wider meaning and significance to the discipline through their study of alternative cinema in new territories, fueled by different historical and political circumstances, innovative technologies, and ambitious practitioners. The
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essays in this volume work to realize the radical societal democratization that shows up in amateur cinema around the world. In particular, diverse contributors highlight the significance of amateur filmmaking, the exhibition of amateur films, the uses and availability of film technologies, and the inventive and creative approaches of filmmakers and advocates of amateur film." (Publisher description)
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"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
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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)
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"This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the 'digital' is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in
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the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today." (Publisher description)
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"The most effective campaigns are face-to-face, repeated campaigns. Such campaigns generally have a larger average impact on persuasion, knowledge, and behavior than remote campaigns (such as ones conducted through television or the internet). Negative and positive messages appear to be almost equal
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ly effective in motivating behavioral change. Negative messaging does seem to be more memorable than other types of messages. However, if negative advertisements are attributed to an individual or organization, they tend to lead to backlash against the sender. Targeting a message to a particular subpopulation greatly increases the success rate of information campaigns, especially if the targeting stresses peer groups or community norms. Additionally, targeting and knowledge of relevant subpopulations can decrease the risk of unintended or counterproductive results. In complex environments where people are bombarded by a wide range of messages, adversarial messaging efforts tend to cancel each other out." (Key findings)
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"The analysis is based on online media coverage in five languages throughout the year. CARE sees a concerning trend of crises being neglected year after year. Six out of the ten crises are located on the African continent. The Central African Republic has appeared in the ranking for five consecutive
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years. Both Madagascar and Burundi – the latter this year’s number 1 with the least media coverage – have made CARE’s list four times so far. This lack of attention adds to burdens such as the severe effects of COVID-19 restrictions and the growing impact of climate change in these countries." (https://reliefweb.int)
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"Straddling the boundary between historical inquiry and personal reflection, this extraordinary text unfolds as a series of encounters with eponymic Holocaust photographs. Although only a small number of photographs are reproduced here, Fresco provides evocative descriptions of many well-known image
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s: synagogues and Torah scrolls burning on the night of Kristallnacht; deportations to the ghettos and the camps; and, finally, mass executions in the killing fields of Eastern Europe. The unique set of photographs included in On the Death of Jews shows groups of women and children from Liepaja (Liepaja), shortly before they were killed in December 1941 in the dunes of Shkede (Skede) on the Baltic Sea. In the last photograph of the series, we see the victims' bodies tumbling into the pit." (Foreword, page vii-viii)
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"Those working in media face plenty of challenges when it comes to handling issues around conflict more sensitively. In some countries, these difficulties could include forced or unsolicited loyalty, a lack of information, or physical and psychological threats. In others, challenges could arise from
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prejudice fostered by excessive homogeneity in newsrooms, or a lack of consciousness for the limits of certain views. In DW Akademie’s publication, authors from around the world approach the question of how media workers can cover conflict better. This includes reflections on how to cope with the deluge of hatred online and on how to deal with trauma. Rather than academic, analytical texts, the publication is made up of thoughtfully written, carefully illustrated and often personal pieces." (Publisher description)
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"While much has been said about individual disinformation campaigns in specific countries, this book offers a panoramic view of how these campaigns are conducted, who they target, and how they are spread. By bringing together research on specific countries and international data mined from questionn
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aires and online studies, the understanding of the term 'fake news' is greatly expanded and the issues we face are brought to light. The book includes contributions by experts such as Jean-Baptiste Vilmer (Macron Leaks), and includes case studies from Asia, such as Singapore and Myanmar, written in an accessible manner for the general interested reader, practitioners and policymakers in the field." (Publisher description)
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"This report sets out a new methodology for assessing cyber power, and then applies it to 15 states: Four members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia; Three cyber-capable allies of the Five Eyes states – France, Israel and Japan; F
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our countries viewed by the Five Eyes and their allies as cyber threats – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea; Four states at earlier stages in their cyber-power development – India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. The methodology is broad and principally qualitative, assessing each state’s capabilities in seven different categories. The cyber ecosystem of each state is analysed, including how it intersects with international security, economic competition and military affairs. On that basis the 15 states are divided into three tiers: Tier One is for states with world-leading strengths across all the categories in the methodology, Tier Two is for those with world-leading strengths in some of the categories, and Tier Three is for those with strengths or potential strengths in some of the categories but significant weaknesses in others. The conclusion is that only one state currently merits inclusion in Tier One. Seven are placed in Tier Two, and seven in Tier Three." (Back cover)
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"There is a heated debate about the social-sustainability implications of infrastructure. We engage this debate by delving into China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR), an important component of China’s infrastructure-centric Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Optimists and pessimists have offered strong v
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iews about the DSR’s social-sustainability implications. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of analytical tools and in-depth studies which can be used to judge their competing arguments. In this article, we address these problems in two ways. First, we advance an original scheme for operationalizing social sustainability. Second, we use our framework to systematically analyze the DSR’s social-sustainability effects in Ethiopia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Hungary. Our research indicates that much of the positive and negative commentary about the DSR’s social-sustainability implications is problematic. None of our cases show significant year-to-year changes in political or quality-of-life social-sustainability benchmarks. Indeed, our analysis indicates that analysts must pay close attention to the political and economic context to understand the social-sustainability patterns associated with DSR infrastructure. Finally, it suggests that the social-sustainability implications of DSR infrastructure are dependent on its scale and nature. These findings have ramifications for broader debates about the socioeconomic impact of infrastructure." (Abstract)
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"This book explores the relationship between the safety of journalists and self-censorship practices around the world, including local case studies and regional and international perspectives. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the globe, Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship p
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rovides new and updated insights into patterns of self-censorship and free speech, focusing on a variety of factors that affect these issues, including surveillance, legislation, threats, violent conflict, gender-related stereotypes, digitisation and social media. The contributions examine topics such as trauma, risk and self-censorship among journalists in different regions of the world, including Central America, Estonia, Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan. The book also provides conceptual clarity to the notion of journalist self-censorship, and explores the question of how self-censorship may be studied empirically." (Publisher description)
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"This article focuses on international news channels in the Global South and the perceptions by audiences in Latin America. Designed with the intention of re-shaping global narratives, international broadcasting is considered instrumental to public diplomacy and improving the image of particular cou
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ntries. While many studies focus on global media policies of specific countries or the messages broadcast by international media outlets, less attention has been paid to the impact on audiences. Based on a series of focus groups conducted in Mexico and Argentina, this article discusses how Latin American audiences perceive public diplomacy efforts as channelled by international news media and their effect on country image perception, by focusing on China’s CCTV-E, Russia’s RT and Iran’s HispanTV. The findings show that preconceived images contribute to undermine the acceptance of international broadcasters. In addition, participants were optimistic about RT’s prospects of success in Latin America, hesitant about HispanTV and pessimistic about China Central Television." (Abstract)
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"In terms of quality of media coverage, there are various outcomes: In Asia, for example, small and independent outlets, able to provide reliable information, gained momentum, whereas citizens in the MENA-region turned to social media in search of trustworthy facts on the coronavirus. In South-Easte
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rn Europe, pseudo-journalism and fake news spread mainly via the Internet, while in sub-Saharan Africa innovative formats emerged, which also enhanced the quality of reporting. In many regions and countries, not least in Germany, demand for factbased, reliable reporting increased, offering an opportunity for quality-oriented media to regain audiences’ trust. The economic situation is difficult for almost all media outlets worldwide, although there are some differences. In Central and Eastern Europe, for example, pro-government media continued to benefit from state-sponsored advertising, while other media suffered even more acute drops in revenue. In many regions, media outlets expanded their online presence to partly compensate these losses by introducing additional paywalls, as was the case in the US, for example. In Latin America, many news outlets had to reduce their staff shortly after the outbreak of COVID-19 due to a shortfall in revenues. Small, independent outlets in Asia and Central Eastern Europe could raise their income through an increase in memberships or subscriptions. In Central Eastern Europe, especially younger generations acknowledged that quality journalism requires financing, while in Southeast Europe, it is still uncommon to pay for online media consumption, which is a setback for independent online journalism." (At a glance, page 2-3)
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"This doctoral dissertation analyzes participation in alternative media, taking the reader to the Russia of the late 2010s. Bringing together discourse theory, media and communication studies and political theory, it approaches participation in media production through the lens of performativity. Th
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e conceptualization of participation as a performance helps explore the material, embodied and spatial enactments of discourses that sustain the fragile and unstable process of production. The data of this study comprise several months of participant observations, interviews with media producers, and textual analysis of media content. The research employs a case-study method and focuses on media that explicitly delegate their participants the right to co-decide on matters of content production and internal organizing process. The three cases under study are Russia’s oldest anarchist medium Avtonom, the student medium DOXA, and the web-based zine Discours. Data analysis integrates qualitative content analysis and a discourse-theoretical approach, informed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory alongside its subsequent developments within the Essex School. The study looks into the distribution of power in alternative media amidst an internal diversity, material constraints, and an antagonistic relationship with the state. The analysis constructs a model of participation, which shows its embeddedness into multiple and partially overlapping communities. A vibrant sociality and the potential for a further expansion of the media communities emerge as two of the key conditions of the participatory process. Furthermore, participation is supported by an ongoing performance of a multiplicity of identities, in which the more elitist articulations of journalism are intertwined with some empowering and counterhegemonic notions of media production, media producers, and the audience. Retaining a critical-explanatory focus, the dissertation explores the limits of power-sharing, such as the persistence of journalistic professionalism, the scarce resources of the media and vulnerability inflicted by the state. The static representation of the state as the major confronting force reveals the paradoxical nature of social antagonism: while mobilizing the limited resources, it also reduces participatory intensities and triggers a politics of trust that restricts access to media production. This dissertation offers a number of theoretical and empirical contributions to several fields. Some of its key insights relate to participation beyond institutional politics, the hybridity of mainstream and alternative media, the interconnection of discourse, materiality and affect, and an empirical applicability of discourse theory." (Abstract)
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"Looking at media involvement in Africa, one can only state that the continent is more important than ever. Next to traditional actors like the BBC or Radio France International, and to a smaller extent of Deutsche Welle or Radio Swiss International, there are new players. They do not seem to have t
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he same agendas as the older ones, but they bring about new versions of journalism, of attempted influence and propaganda. What differentiates them is, in the case of China, that funds do not seem to matter much. In the case of Turkey, that more and more scholarships are being offered and when it comes to Russia, that old alliances of the USSR in the Cold War are being reactivated. What separates them even further from the old players are the values that they stand for and try to propagate. They are offering a journalism that praises their own autocratic models of rule and, in the case of China in particular, they promote a positive journalism, that does not ask uneasy questions, a journalism that does not offend or hurt, but that usually pleases the powers-that-be." (Foreword)
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"The 2021 Europe & Eurasia Vibrant Information Barometer (VIBE) publication stands on the shoulders of IREX’s almost 20 years of the Media Sustainability Index (MSI), which was last published in 2019. Through VIBE, IREX aims to capture a modern era where many people around the world are simultaneo
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usly producers, transmitters, consumers, and actors of the information that shapes their environments and their lives. At the start of the VIBE project, IREX engaged with USAID in an extensive methodology development process, the result of which is this VIBE 2021 publication. A senior methodology consultant with an extensive background in monitoring and evaluation led the development process, which involved expertise from USAID in Washington and overseas, and peer reviews by U.S. and European media and information experts. Building on the MSI’s strengths, the VIBE methodology relies primarily on information from country experts who complete a VIBE questionnaire, provide scores for 20 indicators1 (which are averages of panelists’ scores on supporting sub-indicators), and evidence to justify their scores; they then contribute to a panel discussion led by a moderator. In light of the global pandemic of 2020 and 2021, almost all panel discussions were held online. In a new feature of VIBE, IREX introduced a strength of evidence (SoE) rating to each indicator, which is meant to increase transparency about the potential subjectivity of some indicators (and especially indicators measuring newer concepts or newer sources of information). For each expert-opinion indicator, moderators assigned a SoE rating—Weak, Somewhat Weak, Somewhat Strong, or Strong—based on the quality of evidence informing each indicator, the confidence of panelists in their scores, and the level of consensus across the panel." (Executive summary, page 8)
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"This policy report provides an overview of the challenges and opportunities that the media are facing in Slovakia. Based on a number of interviews that took place with key Slovak media stakeholders, it finds that the Slovak media landscape is currently the freest of the Visegrad countries, despite
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an increase in both government and oligarch control of media. These findings are in line with its RSF Press Freedom Ranking of 33rd place in 2020, up two places on the previous year. The murder of investigative reporter, Ján Kuciak, in 2018 was a turning point which established sense of solidarity amongst the media profession which is coupled with an apparent desire amongst some of the public to investigative journalism, demonstrated through their financial support of a number of influential independent media titles. There are some concerns in relation to mainstream media ownership which appears to remain firmly in the grip of a select number of financial groups and oligarchs with strong business and economic interests although a recent sale of shares in leading publication the Denník SME to the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), a non-for-profit investment fund for independent media raises some hope. The government also continues to control the public media through politicised appointment processes and public advertising spend. The popularity of websites, which are typified by health disinformation and anti-European Union narratives, is a further cause for concern as similar narratives are now being disseminated by some of the online media. The tradition for investigative journalism is strong in Slovakia, however, and it is having some impact on policy and tackling corruption." (Executive summary)
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"The most effective propaganda resonates with audiences’ underlying worldviews and personal experiences. In order to fight it, one has to understand the mindsets that it preys on. This paper sets out to do exactly that. We first track a set of Kremlin-aligned propaganda narratives across Ukrainian
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media, then measure their overall traction through a representative national survey conducted by the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich, and finally use focus groups to understand their deeper appeal and impact. This gives us a uniquely holistic view of contemporary propaganda: from its sources, dissemination, and impact on society right through to how it is received and perceived from the point of view of audiences. The narratives in question include accusations that George Soros’ minions run Ukrainian politics, that the US is building secret bioweapons in Ukraine, and that shadowy “Western curators” secretly control the government. CSS survey data shows that approximately 40% of Ukrainians believe these narratives. They are in turn part of a larger message that sees Ukraine as perpetually under attack from nefarious Western forces. While individual narratives can change over time, this meta-narrative remains. Outright disinformation, conspiratorial thinking, and anti-Western messages combine in a toxic mix. The overall aim is to undermine refo rms, strengthen vested economic interests, alienate Ukraine from its Western partners, and push the country back into Russia’s orbit. While explicitly pro-Russian narratives have become a harder sell in Ukraine since the Kremlin opted to invade the country in 2014, these narratives don’t so much boost Russia as try to make the rest of the world look just as malign. They resonate outside of the usual “pro-Russian” bubble in Ukraine and spread among audiences that are often viscerally opposed to the Kremlin." (Exeuctive summary)
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