"This book offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and digital media. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of digital media forms and highlights examples of new media engagement in all five of the major world religions. From mobile apps and video games to virtual
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reality and social media, the book provides a detailed review of major topics including ritual, identity, community, authority, and embodiment, includes a series of engaging case studies to illustrate and elucidate the thematic explorations, considers the theoretical, ethical, and theological issues raised [...] Thoroughly updated throughout with new case studies and in-depth analysis of recent scholarship and developments, this new edition provides a comprehensive overview of this fast-paced, constantly developing, and fascinating field." (Publisher description)
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"Who constructs Africa’s global media image? That is the main focus of this longitudinal study. It looks at both the journalists and the news sources applied in the British press coverage of Africa between 1992 and 2017. Four British national newspapers (The Guardian, Financial Times, The Times, a
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nd Daily Mail) and a mixed research approach (content analysis and semi-structured interviews) were used. A total sample of 7027 articles were utilized, while nine journalists were interviewed. This study discovered that the British newspapers’ coverage of Africa was dominated by Western journalists and the news sources used in the articles were a proportionate mixture of both African and Western sources, especially in the quality newspapers. It also uncovered that Africa’s global influence, in addition to other factors impact on the UK newspapers’ coverage of Africa. This study concludes that there are some positive changes in the post-colonial British press coverage of Africa, especially in their use of news sources, but there are still some elements of neo-colonialism and racism in the British newspapers’ use of journalists in reporting on Africa." (Abstract)
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"Platforms have power. But this power is not unchecked. Governments have an important role to play in protecting their citizens' rights vis-à-vis third parties and ensuring a communication order in which rights are not violated. (And in addition, of course, they need to respect human rights themsel
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ves and not arbitrarily shut down sites or use their power to make the Internet less free and open). As leader of working group 2 it is my distinct privilege to present this collection which unites studies by researchers within the Global Digital Human Rights Networks on issues connected to the overarching question of how platforms deal with human rights and their human rights obligations. This study is a key deliverable of our working group in the second year of the Global Digital Human Rights Network's activities. We will follow-up with Guidelines for platforms and an Assessment Model for states and other stakeholders in 2024. We developed this study under Corona conditions but were able to meet in the Tyrolean Alps in Obergurgl, Austria, in July 2022 to finalize this study." (Preface, page 7)
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"The book is divided into five sections that examine philosophical principles for reporting on poverty, the history and nature of poverty coverage, problematic representations of people experiencing poverty, poverty coverage as part of reporting on public policy, and positive possibilities for pover
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ty coverage. Each section provides an introduction to the topic, as well as a broad selection of essays illuminating key issues and a Q&A with a relevant journalist. Topics covered include news coverage of corporate philanthropy, structural bias in reporting, representations of the working poor, the moral demands of vulnerability and agency, community empowerment, and citizen media. The book's broad focus considers media and poverty at both the local and global levels with contributors from sixteen countries." (Publisher description)
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"The article argues that community development work, in the form of feminist pedagogy and community radio, can engage more women in technological roles, aid women’s confidence and mental health and possibly, improve diversity in mainstream media. In UK media, corporations are heavily criticized fo
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r their under and misrepresentation of women and, in general, their inability to engage with excluded groups. The BBC’s strategic aim is to improve inclusion and diversity by 2020. The article asserts the value of community development methods in efforts to address this. It explores concepts of voice poverty and empowerment through analysis of the narratives of twelve female community radio volunteers in Northern England.
Using Freire’s (1972) notion of ‘culture of silence’ and against the backdrop of gender inequality, the article clarifies the nature of community radio and employs a variety of literatures to understand how a feminist pedagogy (hooks, 1994) and an intersectional approach (Crenshaw, 1989) might be useful in media. It builds from Stuart Hall’s contention that media and cultural spaces can be powerful sites of social action.
Analysis of participant accounts indicates that community radio is a site of diverse identities, laughter, dialogue, raised consciousness, and conflict. This confronts not only the orthodoxy of young white, male-dominated media but also challenges romantic notions of community harmony and happiness by recognizing inherent tensions within prevailing conceptions of womanhood and within and between communities.
The article foregrounds evidence from the majority world, where community radio is well documented as giving voice to invisiblized women, and concludes with an argument for further exploration of this highly symbolic dimension of empowerment, whereby women overcome technological fears and break their silence by broadcasting diverse voices. The project challenges UK commercial and public broadcasters to learn from the global south that community radio is an effective method of development with potential to enrich the mainstream media world." (Abstract)
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"This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are
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frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights. Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa – striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures." (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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"Top-down approaches have limited potential to reach long-lasting and innovative solutions for the settlement of refugees. There is a growing consensus among scholars and policy-makers that governments alone cannot solve complex societal problems, and that participation of non-government actors, sta
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keholders, media companies, civil society, and the refugee themselves is crucial to achieving more positive outcomes in the long-run. In this special issue, we seek to contribute to this growing research field by exploring the issue in a variety of contexts, using different methodologies and with a focus on the inherent linkages between media, society and political authorities in the management of migration and integration processes. Communication Research, at its diverse layers and from a wide array of topics and methods, is expected to contribute to the analysis of social, political, demographic and cultural changes, so tackling the ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean area is an opportunity to connect theoretical and methodological advances with a relevant topic which certainly requires practical, technical and applied contributions. In doing so, screening the online activity turns into an additional sphere to be kept under attention, as a new space for social discussion and action. The origin of the special issue entitled ‘From fragmentation to integration: Addressing the role of communication in refugee crises and settlement processes’ is a Pre-Conference organized by the guest editors as part of the 68th Annual International Communication Association Conference held in Prague, in 2018. The main purpose of this pre-conference was to open a space for dialogue regarding the way refugee crises and integration processes are tackled by political, social and media actors, aiming to set some guidelines to avoid those mistakes previously noticed and leading to a more constructive and conscious coverage and social action. This event brought together researchers, policy advisors, NGO representatives and refugee migrants to discuss the intersections between refugee migration and communication processes. A selection of original articles that were presented at this event form the basis of this special issue. The main themes addressed in the articles of the current special issue are: (1) inclusive digital forms of literacy and activism for/with refugees; (2) local responsesto refugee crises, (re)settlement and their communication strategies; and (3) media representation of humanitarian crises and refugees in their receiving countries." (Page 4)
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"Drawing upon ethnographic investigation, this article analyses the digital media practices of second-generation British Somali women who live in London. It addresses the dynamic relationships between digital media and diasporic identity formation by focusing on how second-generation women articulat
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e their diasporic urban and transnational identities via youth-oriented online cultural spaces. It demonstrates that they use the internet and social media platforms to position themselves as urban dwellers in London and members of the global Somali diaspora at the same time. In this context, the author proposes that these young women’s digital practices create a translocal nexus that intertwines urban and transnational social fields in line with their gendered and generation-specific experiences and aspirations. Through this translocal nexus, these young women produce multilayered identities and negotiate their multiple belongings with a youth-oriented perspective and style in a digitally interconnected world." (Abstract)
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"In almost all countries, news organisations are the single most widely used source of information about coronavirus. Furthermore, news organisations have become even more central to how people stay informed about coronavirus in the last year because, while overall reach has declined compared to ear
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lier in the pandemic, the reach of other sources has declined more. While important and widely used, news organisations in most countries reach significantly fewer of the younger 18–24-year-olds, and in most countries reach significantly fewer people with low or medium levels of education than those with a university degree, underlining challenges around information inequality. Some of the ‘rally around the flag’ effect seen earlier in the crisis is dissipating, but not equally so for all institutions. Trust in news organisations has declined by an average of eight percentage points (pp), but trust in national government has declined by an average of 13pp. In most countries covered, national health authorities, global health authorities, and scientists, doctors, or other health experts, remain highly and broadly trusted, though this trust has declined somewhat too, especially in Argentina and the United States. The trust gap between coronavirus information from news organisations and information on different kinds of platforms remains pronounced. On average, the gap between news organisations and social media is 21pp, between news and video sites 22pp, and between news and messaging applications 28pp. The gap is six points on average between news and search engines, but in Japan the gap is not statistically significant, and in Argentina and Brazil search engines are trusted more for news and information about COVID-19." (Executive summary, page 7)
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"This report examines how people in Brazil, India, the UK, and the US view news media in their countries, the factors they use when determining whether sources are trustworthy, and what ‘trust in news’ ultimately means to them [...] While we note throughout the report areas of difference between
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the four countries, such as the role played by particular forms of news or individual media figures, mainly we focus on the similarities we found, which were often striking. In most cases, study participants tended to fall back on impressions of brand quality that many said were rooted in how familiar they were with a given source and its reputation established over time based on past use, perceived partisanship, or word-of-mouth. Although many spoke about the importance of accuracy and impartiality in their assessments of trust – with individual journalists typically playing a lesser or even negative role – such terms often meant different things to different people. While a minority raised concerns about representation and whether news aligned with their lived experiences, others focused on perceived political or commercial biases or their sense that all news sources were irretrievably beholden to elite agendas." (Conclusion, page 40)
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"Beim so genannten „Scoring“ wird einer Person mithilfe algorithmischer Verfahren ein Zahlenwert zugeordnet, um ihr Verhalten zu bewerten und zu beeinflussen. „Super-Scoring“-Praktiken gehen noch weiter und führen Punktesysteme und Skalen aus unterschiedlichen Lebensbereichen zusammen, wie
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etwa Bonität, Gesundheitsverhalten oder Lernleistungen. Diese Ver-fahren könnten sich zu einem neuen und übergreifenden Governance-Prinzip in der digitalen Gesellschaft entwickeln. Ein besonders prominentes Beispiel ist das Social Credit System in China. Aber auch in westlichen Gesellschaften gewinnen Scoring-Praktiken und digitale Soziometrien an Bedeutung. Dieser Open Access Band stellt aktuelle Beispiele von datengetriebenen sozialen Steuerungs-prozessen aus verschiedenen Ländern vor, diskutiert ihre normativen Grundlagen und gesell-schaftspolitischen Auswirkungen und gibt erste bildungspolitische Empfehlungen. Wie ist der aktuelle Stand einschlägiger Praktiken in China und in westlichen Gesellschaften? Wie sind die individuellen und sozialen Folgen zu bewerten? Wie wandelt sich das Bild vom Menschen und wie sollte bereits heute die politische und aufklärerische Bildung darauf reagieren?" (Buchrückseite)
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"This report contains a range of findings about news audiences in each of the four countries [Brazil, India, United Kingdom, United States], focusing on audiences overall as well as different segments of the public categorised according to their degree of trust towards news brands in their country.
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We summarise several of the key results of our analysis here: People are more trusting of news they themselves use, including on social media, but less trusting of news they don’t use, especially news found on digital platforms [...] Many hold highly negative views about basic journalistic practices [...] The least trusting towards news tend to be older, less educated, less interested in politics, and less connected to urban centres [...] The least trusting pay less attention to and are more indifferent towards specific characteristics about how journalism is practised [...] Experience interacting with journalists is rare and familiarity with basic concepts concerning how news works is often low [...] Gaps in trust in news align with deficits in social and interpersonal trust as well as dissatisfaction with democracy." (Summary of key findings, page 8)
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"Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France,
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Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research." (Publisher description)
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"Was ist aus Schulbüchern über Afrika zu lernen und woher kommen diese Wissensbestände? Schulbuchproduktion wird in diesem Band als Knotenpunkt gesellschaftlicher Diskurse und Praktiken verstanden und Schulbuchwissen im Kontext seiner Produktionsbedingungen sowie der gesellschaftlichen Debatten a
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nalysiert. Mit Blick auf die Schulbuchproduktion wird gezeigt, dass die Vorstellung, dass Schulbücher in einem Top-down-Modell produziert werden, relativiert werden muss. Zudem wird sichtbar, wie viele unterschiedliche Akteurinnen und Akteure im Bildungsbereich um Afrikawissen rangen. Lars Müller zeichnet das Spektrum des Sagbaren in Bezug auf Afrikawissen nach und zeigt, wie sich manche Wissensbestände durchsetzten und andere randständig blieben." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"In 2017, the UK Parliament passed an Act requiring legal pornographic websites to implement 'robust' age verification checks. Although the Act inspired lawmakers elsewhere to propose similar legislation, it was never enacted, in part because it did not cover social media platforms. Instead, the UK
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government has turned to its Online Harms White Paper - which does target social media platforms - to protect children from online pornography. There is, however, scant evidence on the media platforms and technologies children use to access pornography. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a survey of 16- and 17-year-olds in the United Kingdom. The results show that more (63%) had seen pornography on social media platforms than on pornographic websites (47%), suggesting the UK government was right to target such platforms in its latest proposals. However, pornography was much more frequently viewed on pornographic websites than on social media, showing how important the regulation of such sites remains. Furthermore, our finding that 46% of 16- and 17-year-olds had used a virtual private network or Tor browser adds weight to concerns that restrictions on legal internet pornography - such as age verification checks - imposed by a single country may be circumvented by those the restrictions are designed to protect." (Abstract)
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"[...] in this article, we present the results of a collective self-assessment exercise for a panel of eight case studies (covering four continents) [Amazon rainforest, Brazil; Colombia; India; Bangaldesh; Egypt; Lake Manyara Basin, Tanzania; Baltic Sea, Germany; Isles of Scilly, UK] ] of communicat
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ions between project teams and local communities within the context of climate change or biodiversity loss. Our analysis develops eight indicators of good stakeholder communication, which we construct from the literature, in addition to Verran (2002) 's concept of postcolonial moments as a communicative utopia. Our study contributes to the (analytical) understanding of such communications, while also providing tangible insights for field work and policy recommendations. We demonstrate that applying our indicators can foster a more successful communication, although we find an apparent divergence between timing, complexity, and (introspective) effort of the project teams. While three case studies qualify for postcolonial moments, our findings show that especially the scrutiny of power relations and genuine knowledge co-production are still rare. We verify the potency of various instruments for deconstructing science; however, we also show that their sophistication cannot substitute other crucial factors. Instead, simple deconstruction efforts may suffice, while trust-building, proper time management, and an advanced awareness of the scientists are crucial. Lastly, we consider that reforming rigid and inadequate funding policies will help overcome significant barriers and improve the work in and with local communities." (Abstract)
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"This practical guide aims to provide journalists with concrete legal tools to deal with online harassment, be it to identify punishable offences, to seek help from appropriate organisations, to efficiently gather evidence and to take steps should they decide to file a complaint against the perpetra
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tors. Where appropriate, it also presents examples of litigation initiated by journalists who were victims of online harassment. It covers online harassment of journalists in Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom (England and Wales) and the United States. Although none of these countries provide specific provisions sanctioning online harassment of journalists, they all offer civil and criminal law provisions that make it possible to apprehend, punish and compensate all or part of the most common abuses committed against journalists. In addition to the comprehensive presentation of the legal tools available for journalists in each of these jurisdictions, this guide aims to provide journalists with an overview of the solutions available to combat situations of online harassment, in order to enable them to choose the best legal forum to exercise their rights." (Introduction)
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"Migration is one of the most pressing, divisive issues in global politics today, and media play a crucial role in how communities understand and respond. This study examines how UK newspapers (n=974) and popular news websites (n=1044) reported on asylum seekers throughout 2017. It contributes to pr
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evious literature in two important ways. First, by examining the ‘new normal’ of daily news coverage in the wake of the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. Second, by looking at how asylum seekers from different regions are represented. The content analysis finds significant variations in how asylum seekers are reported, including terminology use and topics they are associated with. The article also identifies important commonalities in how all asylum seekers are represented – most notably, the dominance of political elites as sources across all media content. It argues that Entman’s ‘cascade network model’ can help to explain this, with elites in one country able to influence transnational reports." (Abstract)
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