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Information Flows and Radicalization Leading to Violent Extremism in Central Asia

Search for Common Ground;Internews (2019), 77 pp.

"The study is comprised of three main parts: a desk study of available and accessible material – reports, documents and media material; a qualitative study comprising over 200 interviews with ordinary people, experts, and persons with direct experience with radicalization leading to violent extrem ... ism (RVE); and a quantitative component consisting of national surveys of people’s information consumption habits. For the desk study, the effort was made to gain as broad a picture as possible, that is, to cover all five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. However, predictably and unfortunately, Uzbekistan and especially Turkmenistan proved difficult cases to study in full. For both the qualitative and quantitative field research activities, for several reasons, only the first three countries were included. As a result, this study is able to report most robustly on these three countries and propose observations regarding Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan only to a limited extent. Based on the desk study, the drivers of extremist sympathies as established in existing research have been political grievances (injustice from state structures; identity-based discrimination; oppressive political regimes, etc), economic difficulties (unemployment; indebtedness; poverty; and desire for quick and greater income) and ideological motivations (resentment of false values; striving for the singularly just and true life; for reward in a perceived afterlife). To these push and pull factors are added a range of enabling factors, such as migration, young age, gender (women), and means of communication. All these drivers of RVE need to be treated with caution, as stressed by various authors and suggested by evidence gained in field research. A general observation, gained from the desk research and supported by evidence in both qualitative and quantitative field studies, was the difference among the countries in degree of control over the information space, or the degree of hegemony over public discourse. Of the three most fully studied countries, hegemonic discourse was the strongest in Tajikistan, followed by Kazakhstan, and the least in Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan, analyzed to a limited extent, would be closer to the extreme of Tajikistan, whereas Turkmenistan was too closed to make reasonably robust observations." (Page 3) more

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Digitalizing Islamic Lectures: Islamic Apps and Religious Engagement in Contemporary Indonesia

Moch Fakhruroji

Contemporary Islam, volume 13 (2018), pp. 201-215

"Contemporary mobile phone technology has brought millions of apps into the pockets of users, including a wide variety oriented towards religious concerns. Such apps appear to be creating new forms of religious engagement, a process that is particularly visible within Indonesia. This paper will exam ... more

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Pressefreiheit: Nicht überall erhältlich

iz3w, issue 365 (2018), pp. 13-36

"Die iz3w erscheint in einem Land mit einer »guten Situation« für Presseerzeugnisse (globaler Index der Reporter ohne Grenzen). In vielen Ländern ist die Lage infolge von Repressionen »sehr ernst«, zum Beispiel in China, in Iran oder Sudan. Auch in Ländern zwischen diesen Extremen kann freier ... more

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Promoting the Digital Transformation of African Portuguese-Speaking Countries and Timor-Leste

Paris: OECD (2018), 132 pp.

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De-Centring Western Enlightenment: Revisionist Histories, Contestation and Communication Theory

Shakuntala Banaji (ed.)

Javnost: The Public, volume 25, issue 4 (2018), pp. 333-440

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Der politische Mythos von sozialen Medien als liberalem Cyberspace und freier Online-Meinungsäußerung in Vietnam

Bui Hai Thiem

In: Vietnam: Mythen und Wirklichkeiten

Jörg Wischermann; Gerhard Will (eds.)

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb) (2018), pp. 212-234

"Während viele Bürgerinnen und Bürger sowie Beobachter große Hoffnungen hegen, die sozialen Medien könnten ein wirksames Instrument sein, um soziale Bewegungen zu Themen wie Ungleichheit, Ungerechtigkeit und Umwelt in Gang zu setzen, ist es zuweilen schwierig, die massenhaften Reaktionen in den ... more

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Brought to You by Foreigners, Warlords, and Local Activists: TV and the Afghan Culture Wars

Wazhmah Osman

In: Modern Afghanistan: The Impact of 40 Years of War

M. Nazif Shahrani (ed.)

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (2018), pp. 149-176

"Without a doubt, the combined power of the public arena and broadcast media is a very efective social tool for collective action in Afghanistan. Yet there are serious limits to both the media’s self-advocacy and the public’s strong and unwavering support. Te media-related crimes and murders men ... tioned in this chapter are a few of the many. Yet no arrests are made and no one is prosecuted in most of these cases. Zoorawarah can continue to censor media makers with impunity and without fears of retribution. Broadcasting the incidents of violence and censorship against media personnel and the media writ large, as well as the subsequent protests and production of investigative and expository programs is indeed generative in creating dialogue and raising awareness about media rights and the important role of a free media in a society, but it is clearly not enough. Tus far, we have seen examples of two types of potential cultural imperialism. By aggressively promoting and offering their own media products, programs, and formats, at little or no cost, the argument can be made that foreign countries are impeding the development of Afghanistan’s own media industry, artistry, and media crafts. Additionally, we have seen examples of censorship, both from endogenous and exogenous forces, ranging from pressuring the government to ban programming or directly pressuring producers to do so. In extreme cases, we have seen an egregious third form of censorship becoming prevalent in Afghanistan. High-level media personnel and wealthy media owners who are ofen prominent public fgures, such as politicians, warlords, drug lords, religious leaders, and businessmen, hire body guards and live behind gated fortress mansions, while low-level television personalities and reporters are subjected to threats, physical attacks, and death for providing people with programming they want to watch and which gives them a platform to raise their voices. Hence, it is the mid- and low-level media professionals, not the owners of the television stations they work for nor the foreign governments that are the patrons of the stations, who bear the ultimate burden of media freedom and reform in Afghanistan. Caught between warring ideologies that range from Islamist to commercial to “developmentalist,” as brave as these Afghan media personalities and journalists are, and despite their high media a profile, their low socioeconomic status leaves them vulnerable to abuse and possible death." (Conclusion, page 168-169) more

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Movie Making as Critical Pedagogy: Conscientization Through Visual Storytelling

Grady Walker

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), xx, 216 pp.

"Can the stories people tell influence the way they see the world? This book seeks to address that question through a study of the viability of movie making as a critical pedagogy activity. Positioned at the intersection of education and communication for social change, it explores the relationship ... more

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Social Media Use Needs Assessment for At-Risk Groups & In-Depth Analysis of Use of Social Media in Indonesia

Ruici Tio, Fatima Astuti, Hannah Perry et al.

Search for Common Ground;Love Frankie (2018), 84 pp.

"This report summarizes the findings from a research study conducted by Love Frankie to inform Search for Common Ground (Search) in developing an implementation strategy for a 24-month project to reduce the influence of violent extremist narratives online, particularly targeted at youth and ex-juven ... more

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Social Media in Turkey as a Space for Political Battles: AKTrolls and other Politically Motivated Trolling

Erkan Saka

Middle East Critique, volume 27, issue 2 (2018), pp. 161-177

"This article focuses on AKTrolls, defined as pro-government political trolls in Turkey, while attempting to draw implications about political trolling in the country in general. It examines their methods and effects, and it interrogates whether (and how) Turkish authorities have attempted to shape ... more

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Social Media Marketing in China mit WeChat: Einsatzmöglichkeiten, Funktionen und Tools für ein erfolgreiches Mobile Business

Yinyuan Liu

Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler (2018), xviii, 247 pp.

"Dieses Buch zeigt, wie Unternehmen den Instant-Messaging-Dienst WeChat für ihr Social Media Marketing in China erfolgreich nutzen können. Denn WeChat ist viel mehr als ein mobiler Messenger – es ist Alltagsbegleiter und bezahlt beispielsweise Stromrechnungen, vereinbart Arzttermine, kauft Flug- ... more

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Women Into Politics! Greater Female Participation in Cambodia: A Best-Practice Handbook 2016–2018

Kyle James

Bonn: Deutsche Welle DW Akademie (2018), 35 pp.

"Women are a great untapped potential in Cambodia. That is the driving idea behind the EU-funded project “Women into Politics! Greater female participation in Cambodia”. This three-year project reached women from different regions in Cambodia and gave them the communications skills they needed t ... more

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Mass Media in the Post-Soviet World: Market Forces, State Actors, and Political Manipulation in the Informational Environment After Communism

Peter Rollberg, Marlene Laruelle (eds.)

Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag (2018), 446 pp.

"This collection covers the major trends of the media environment of the post-Communist world and their recent development, with special focus on Russia and the post-Soviet space. The term ‘media environment’ covers not just traditional print and electronic media, but new media as well, and rang ... more

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Journalist Social Media Practice in China: A Review and Synthesis

Guowei Jian, Ting Liu

Journalism, volume 19, issue 9-10 (2018), pp. 1452-1470

"The growing influence of social media on journalistic work has attracted scholarly attention worldwide in recent years. However, due to cultural and language barriers, we lack comprehensive understanding of the journalist social media practice in non-Western countries. To help fill this gap, this s ... more

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Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience

Rongbin Han

New York: Columbia University Press (2018), xvi, 315 pp.

"Han reveals how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse, interrogating our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the internet's democratizing power." (Publisher description)

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Transnationalizing Radio Research: New Approaches to an Old Medium

Golo Föllmer, Alexander Badenoch (eds.)

Bielefeld: transcript (2018), 313 pp.

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How Effective is Communication in the Rohingya Refugee Response? An Evaluation of the Common Service for Community Engagement and Accountability

Nicola Bailey, Mahmuda Hoque, Katherine Michie, Fuad Ur Rabbi

London: BBC Media Action (2018), 30 pp.

"A survey, conducted in July 2018, interviewed 750 people from the Rohingya community and 750 people from the host community (local Bangladeshi citizens) about how they access information, what they think of the information and how they communicate with aid providers. The survey tracked how perceive ... d provision of information has changed since an initial information needs assessment, carried out by Internews, in October 2017 [...] The survey shows that people feel substantially more informed in July 2018 than they did in October 2017. The Internews study in October found that only 23% of Rohingya men and women felt they had enough information to make good decisions for themselves and their family. This recent study shows that 84% feel they have enough information to make good decisions for themselves and their families and three quarters (75%) of the Rohingya community said it had become easier to get information over the last six months. This is similar to other data collected – a recent Translators without Borders study found that 68% of Rohingya refugees feel they have enough information to make decisions. During fieldwork, almost a third (30%) of Rohingya survey respondents asked the data collectors questions such as, did they know where to collect relief, or did they know anything about the Government’s plans for repatriation? This suggests that while the Rohingya community feel better informed than when they first arrived, they still have many questions, particularly around their future – only 41% of respondents said they felt informed about their options for the future. The survey showed that the current key information needs of the Rohingya and host community are around their main concerns – where to find food. The Rohingya are also worried about sourcing cooking fuel, while the host community is seeking information around financial support as a result of perceived declining employment opportunities [...] Mahjis (Rohingya community leaders) are the main source of information for Rohingya people (mentioned by 87% of participants) and are now the most trusted source of information (they were only ranked 7th in the October 2017 information needs assessment). This increase in trust may be reflective of how agencies and camp coordinators are more systematically using mahjis to share information with people in their camp block. Mahjis are the main channel through which Rohingya communities say they communicate with aid providers (mentioned by 38% of respondents)." (Executiv summary) more

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2018 Global NGO Online Technology Report

Nonprofit Tech for Good;Public Interest Registry (2018), 27 pp.

"Throughout the 2000’s, NGOs experimented with promoting “Donate Now” buttons and online donation pages, and through a process of trial and error, learned a winning strategy that still works today. Specifically, NGOs that are successful at online fundraising have embraced a content strategy of ... more

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Faith on Trial: Blasphemy and ‘lawfare’ in Indonesia

Kari Telle

Ethnos, volume 83, issue 2 (2018), pp. 371-391

"This article develops the argument that blasphemy trials occupy a pivotal role in ‘religion-making’ in post-1998 Indonesia. Examining a blasphemy trial on the island of Lombok in 2010, I argue that the process of democratisation has given civilian actors more opportunity to engage Indonesia’s ... more

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How Has Media Programming Supported Polio Eradication?

Sanjib Saha

London: BBC Media Action (2018), 11 pp.

"Since 2013, BBC Media Action has been working closely with Unicef to support polio eradication. Through mass media programming – radio magazine shows and drama, and radio and TV public service announcements (PSAs) – it has sought to break down barriers to immunising against polio and other chil ... more