"Pre-publication censorship has been abolished, private journals and papers abound (although the issue of consolidation caused by financial strains is another matter) and, depending on your calculations, there are between 2,000 and 5,000 accredited journalists in Myanmar, at least half of whom are w
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omen. Yet you could count on one hand the number of women in leadership positions in the local media landscape … In the words of Nai Nai, a former journalist who worked first for the Southeast Asian Press Alliance and now FOJO (and conducted the interview with Ye Naing Moe in this volume), "The hardest challenge of all is the attitude from male senior staff who do not want to accept and respect the effort and capacity of women. The top-down communication and 'don't talk back' culture is a huge issue to tackle." Women journalists, instead of being respected, are seen as "incapable, burdensome, emotional and unable to reason", added Nai Nai. Her family of journalistic talent also includes a younger sister who left her job as a producer with a television station to give birth, becoming yet another statistic of female journalists whose careers were cut short after choosing to start a family." (Pages 243-244)
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"Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change is the first volume to overview the country’s contemporary media landscape, providing a critical assessment of the sector during the complex and controversial political transition. Moving beyond the focus on journalism and freedom of th
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e press that characterizes many media-focused volumes, Myanmar Media in Transition also explores developments in fiction, filmmaking, social movement media and social media. Documenting changes from both academic and practitioner perspectives, the twenty-one chapters reinforce the volume’s theoretical arguments by providing on-the-ground, factual and experiential data intended to open useful dialogue between key stakeholders in the media, government and civil society sectors. Providing an overview of media studies in the country, Myanmar Media in Transition addresses current challenges, such as the use of social media in spreading hate speech and the shifting boundaries of free expression, by placing them within Myanmar’s broader historic social, political and economic context." (Publisher description)
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"Verschwörungstheorien sind kein Alleinstellungsmerkmal der Rechten und des Rechtspopulismus, sie reichen bis weit in gesellschaftliche Mitte. Auch die linke Szene ist anfällig dafür. Das unreflektierte Gerede von »den Herrschenden«, »den Eliten« oder »den Großmächten« eröffnet eine Quer
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front zu ähnlich skurrilen Weltbildern der rechten Szene. Wahlweise werden die CIA, der Mossad, die Nato, der Westen, die USA, China oder Russland für die Unterdrückung der Völker verantwortlich gemacht, und immer verfolgen sie dabei angeblich größere Geheimpläne. Dass beispielsweise die CIA tatsächlich massiv in andere Staaten eingreift, ist aber kein Geheimnis und beruht nicht auf einer Verschwörung, sondern ist ihr offen kommunizierter machtpolitischer Auftrag, über dessen Details mehr bekannt ist, als die Meisten glauben. Und doch arbeiten viele PolitikerInnen wie derzeit etwa Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela mit obskuren Sündenbocktheorien, um von selbst verursachten Missständen abzulenken. Gegen den Irrsinn der Verschwörungstheorien hilft nur Aufklärung. Man kommt nicht umhin, sich über sie zu informieren und immer wieder dagegen zu argumentieren." (Editorial, Seite 19)
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"In den 1980er Jahren verstärkte sich das Unbehagen an der Gedenkkultur mit ihren Heldenerzählungen und nationalen Beschränkungen. Mit der größeren Komplexität des Gedenkens und der Hinwendung zu den sozialen Kosten historischer Ereignisse prägte sich eine neue Erinnerungskultur aus. Diese is
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t kein abgeschlossenes Modell. In diesem Prozess wandeln sich die Wahrnehmung der Vergangenheit sowie die zukunftsgerichteten Zwecke des Gedenkens." (Seite 17)
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"The Big Nine who will determine the future of artifical intelligence (AI) - Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and Facebook in America; and Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent in China - serve masters with conflicting interests. Wall Street wants profit now without regard to consequences. The Chinese g
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overnment wants citizens cowed by social controls. These companies are likely to deliver what their respective masters want - decisions that are increasingly out of whack with humanity's best interests. Yet there is still time to choose the right path. In three eye-opening scenarios - optimistic, pragmatic, catastrophic - Webb forecasts the potential directions AI could take. If the Big Nine change course from a path now leading to disaster, AI could indeed be a boon for humanity. If not, our democratic ideals could implode." (Back cover)
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"Ahead of the general election in April and May 2019, Indian political parties are using social media aggressively to propagate their ideology, mobilise public opinion, set policy agendas, and discredit detractors. Since the 2014 general election, India’s two major political parties – the Bharat
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iya Janata Party, which currently leads the coalition government, and the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party – have invested heavily in digital political campaigning." (Abstract)
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"This book interrogates the possibilities of global thinking from the south in the field of media, communication, and cultural studies. Through lenses of millennial media cultures, it refocuses the praxis of the global south in relation to the established ideas of globalization, development, and con
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ditions of postcoloniality. Bringing together original empirical work from media scholars from across the global south, the volume highlights how contemporary thinking about the region as theoretical framework - an emerging area of theory in its own right - is incomplete without due consideration being placed on narrative forms, both analogue and digital, traditional and sub-cultural. From news to music cultures, from journalism to visual culture, from screen forms to culture-jamming, the chapters in the volume explore contemporary popular forms of communication as manifested in diverse global south contexts." (Publisher description)
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"Drawing from often overlooked sources of evidence, this report shows that China’s homegrown social media platforms have responded to market incentives by subtly shielding users from certain forms of online censorship and repression. Meanwhile, the party confronts rising costs—both economicall
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y and politically—for stamping out the diffuse forms of dissent that spread across these networks. Has the debate over the role of new communications technology in China’s political system really been decided? China’s $56 billion internet advertising market now dwarfs advertising in print, radio, and broadcast—and investments have frequently followed audiences to platforms where they feel free to express themselves. Chinese state officials are frequently raising concerns about the growing threat to the party’s control posed by social media, including the dangers of “out of control” algorithms. Hiding key indicators from the censors, reviving banned accounts, and creating opportunities for collective action: social media platforms are quietly and subtly testing the political boundaries in response to their audience’s preferences." (Key findings)
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"The year 2019 was challenging for Sri Lanka, with the Easter Sunday Attacks and the subsequent anti-Muslim riots paralyzing the country and the economy. After the Easter Sunday attacks, the first terrorist attacks on Sri Lankan soil in a decade, it was expected that the media would play a responsib
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le role in reporting on the tragedy and addressing the preceding circumstances. However, many Media Sustainability Index (MSI) panelists believe that after a few days of responsible reporting of relaying government warnings and urging the public to be careful, most media stations decided to capitalize on fear and mistrust to fulfill their commercial and political agendas. After the Easter Sunday attackers were revealed to be Islamic fundamentalists, many media institutions, especially the private media, shifted their tone and fostered a culture of fear and suspicion against Muslims. Many attributed anti-Muslim riots that took place in May 2019 to the media’s anti-Muslim rhetoric [...] Many MSI panelists with print media ties expressed serious concern over the industry’s future. They noted that following the Easter Sunday attacks and the impact on advertising, a significant number of people were laid off, employee benefits were cut, and advertisers have not returned, even though the economy somewhat recovered in late 2019. Although mainstream media, especially print, has faced many disruptions in the last 20 years (i.e., the digitization of content, the spread of social media, and the acceleration of mobile consumption), the panelists believe the current disruption may be unprecedented. Panelists warned that unless media owners analyze the situation and make significant changes, the economic crisis following the Easter Sunday attacks, will exacerbate the print media’s decline." (Page 5)
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"Digital media histories are part of a global network, and South Asia is a key nexus in shaping the trajectory of digital media in the twenty-first century. Digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others are deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people around the world, shaping ho
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w people engage with others as kin, as citizens, and as consumers. Moving away from Anglo-American and strictly national frameworks, the essays in this book explore the intersections of local, national, regional, and global forces that shape contemporary digital culture(s) in regions like South Asia: the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, the ongoing transformation of established media industries, and emergent forms of digital media practice and use that are reconfiguring sociocultural, political, and economic terrains across the Indian subcontinent. From massive state-driven digital identity projects and YouTube censorship to Tinder and dating culture, from Twitter and primetime television to Facebook and political rumors, Global Digital Cultures focuses on enduring concerns of representation, identity, and power while grappling with algorithmic curation and data-driven processes of production, circulation, and consumption." (Publisher description)
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"This study aims to explore the working environment of Pakistani journalists in Islamabad by analyzing their opinion on media freedom and professional autonomy. It also aims to highlight the limitations and difficulties faced by these journalists while performing their professional duties. To achiev
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e these aims, focus groups and in-depth interviews of media professionals were conducted. The focus group consisted of seven experienced journalists whereas in-depth interviews involved five male and three female journalists of the same city for a comprehensive understanding of their viewpoints and true insight of their position. Results showed all the respondents (male and female) from Islamabad city were not satisfied with their working environment, safety, and security. Not only their salaries were found insufficient for their personal needs yet they were facing certain threats from various pressure groups. The study found that their employers did not provide the minimum required safety and security against these threats." (Abstract)
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"Governments with strict control over the information that their citizens hear from foreign sources are regular targets of human rights pressure, but we know little about how this information matters in the domestic realm. I argue that authoritarian regimes strategically pass on certain types of ext
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ernal pressure to their public to “internationalize” human rights violations, making citizens view human rights in terms of defending their nation internationally rather than in terms of individual violations, and making them more likely to be satisfied with their government’s behavior. I find strong support for this model through statistical analysis of Chinese state media reports of external human rights pressure and a survey experiment on Chinese citizens’ responses to pressure on women’s rights. This analysis demonstrates that authoritarian regimes may be able to manipulate international human rights diplomacy to help them retain the support of their population while suppressing their human rights." (Abstract)
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"Privacy scholarship has shown how norms of appropriate information flow and information regulatory processes vary according to environment, which change as the environment changes, including through the introduction of new technologies. This paper describes findings from a qualitative research stud
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y that examines practices and perceptions of privacy in Cambodia as the population rapidly moves into an online environment (specifically Facebook, the most popular Internet tool in Cambodia today). We empirically demonstrate how the concept of privacy differs across cultures and show how the Facebook platform, as it becomes popular worldwide, catalyzes change in norms of information regulation. We discuss how the localization of transnational technology platforms provides a key site in which to investigate changing cultural ideas about privacy, and to discover misalignments between different expectations for information flow. Finally, we explore ways that insufficient localization effort by transnational technology companies puts some of the most marginalized users at disproportionate information disclosure risk when using new Internet tools, and offer some pragmatic suggestions for how such companies could improve privacy tools for users who are far -geographically or culturally - from where the tools are designed." (Abstract)
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"Mongolia has much work to do to ensure full media freedom. Laws on defamation and access to information hamper media’s ability to report fully on matters of public interest and public figures engaged in public business. A deeper understanding of international standards on media freedom and the va
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luable role media play in society are required for true progress to be made. The 2018 Joint Staff Working Document referred to the Human Rights Committee’s Concluding Observations on Mongolia’s 2017 sixth periodic report on ICCPR implementation. Taking this lead, the monitoring focused on the effective application of ICCPR provisions before domestic courts, broad legal restrictions on freedom of expression, and media freedom. The Government of Mongolia has made no positive developments until now. Particularly problematic is the fact that the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs plans to re-criminalize defamation in amendments to the Criminal Code. Mongolia lacks laws and policies important to guaranteeing media freedom, such as a general broadcast law including the recognition of community media, laws on media ownership transparency and concentration, and laws on the protection of sources. Numerous legal restrictions on the right to freedom of expression still exist, and many of these provisions are actively applied. The most serious are defamation laws, which are criminal, civil, and administrative in nature, and employed with great frequency against the media. There is no doubt that many media outlets engage in irresponsible reporting, but this cannot justify the current state of defamation laws in Mongolia." (Conclusion)
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"In this publication, we focus on the people who make right to information laws come to life, and who use them as tools to fight corruption. In the following pages, you will find the stories of citizens from 10 countries across the Asia Pacific region who have used their right to information to dema
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nd accountability from their governments. From uncovering wrongdoing in Bangladesh and Mongolia, to ensuring that citizens get the services they need in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, and from holding politicians to account in the Maldives to ensuring that governments share key guidance and statistics in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, these stories show the difference access to information can make. Information requests should be seen as a routine way for citizens to understand their government’s work and to hold it accountable. However, in many places around the world, this is not the case. In many countries, making these requests requires great courage from citizens who may face challenges and danger in doing so." (Introduction, page 3)
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