"This study highlights the recent phenomenon of online social movements in Vietnam having some characteristics of the ‘horizontal networks’ and ‘mass self-communication’ conceptualised by theorist Manuel Castells. My arguments are developed on the basis of an analysis of original research in
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terviews with media professionals and using a case study approach exploring the dynamism of internet users who began networking to voice their public feelings on social issues. This article suggests that online social movements in Vietnam are in their early stage, and are expected to increase along with the growing influence of the internet and the control of Vietnam’s communist authorities." (Abstract)
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"The Cambodia Communication Assistance Project (CCAP) enables citizens to publicly express issues through media, and decision makers to respond to those issues raised, improving government accountability and transparency. CCAP provides two-way dialogue platforms for citizens to question sub-national
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authorities (elected and non-elected provincial, district, commune and village officials) and then follow up on responses. Working with media outlets in four provinces on talkback programming, content focusses on local government services and ending violence against women – two areas that affect the daily well-being and prosperity of many Cambodians. This is achieved through integrated media dialogue platforms, which comprise: Radio: 20 one-hour live to air talkback shows on governance issues plus six one-hour ending violence against women shows every week. All programs are rebroadcast, totalling 52 hours over six days per week; ICT and social media: 60,000 visitors per month, 387,500 website hits per month, 60,000 Facebook followers and more than 51,000 Facebook page likes; Community listening clubs: four lead community listening clubs and 52 small listening groups that meet, listen, discuss, and call into radio programs." (Page 3)
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"At the forefront in its field, this Handbook examines the theoretical, conceptual, pedagogical and methodological development of media literacy education and research around the world. Building on traditional media literacy frameworks in critical analysis, evaluation, and assessment, it incorporate
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s new literacies emerging around connective technologies, mobile platforms, and social networks. A global perspective rather than a Western-centric point of view is explicitly highlighted, with contributors from all continents, to show the empirical research being done at the intersection of media, education, and engagement in daily life. Structured around five themes—Educational Interventions; Safeguarding/Data and Online Privacy; Engagement in Civic Life; Media, Creativity and Production; Digital Media Literacy—the volume as a whole emphasizes the competencies needed to engage in meaningful participation in digital culture." (Publisher description)
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"On May 22nd 2014, The Kingdom of Thailand experienced its latest successful military coup. A few months later, in November 2014, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 was released in Thai cinemas sparking new protests using symbols from the series. With this article, I seek to examine the reception o
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f The Hunger Games series in Thailand by different interest groups in light of recent political developments. I present a system of shared reference that is based on Jonathan Cohen’s discussions of ‘identification’ and ‘spectatorship’ (2001) to illustrate the relationship between The Hunger Games series in Thailand, pro-democracy protesters, and the military junta. I aim to illuminate how the two opposing sides use and understand references from The Hunger Games as part of their actions in an ongoing tense political climate." (Summary)
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"As in other regions, journalism in Southeast Asia is under pressure. Journalists in many of the region’s emerging markets have to develop their profession while struggling with changing market conditions, increasingly more demanding audiences, different degrees of authoritative states and growing
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competition from the Internet. Based on qualitative interviews and drawing on a combination of role theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, this article compares the role performances of journalists in Singapore and Vietnam by looking into the different expectations journalists in the two countries meet. The article illustrates how journalists continue to feel most conflicted about conforming with the states’ expectations to their profession. However, online actors imposing on the journalistic field are beginning to have a progressively bigger impact. Though they push the boundaries and set the media agenda, journalists fear they are changing the journalistic habitus, devaluing the journalistic capital and eroding years’ worth of professionalization progress." (Abstract)
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"This edited volume addresses various aspects of social and political development in Turkey and the latter's role within a global context. Paradigmatically and theoretically, it is situated in the realm of communication and/for social change. The chapters thread together to present a fresh and innov
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ative study that explores an array of issues related to the Gezi protests and their aftermath by scholars and activists from Scandinavia, Turkey and India. Through its thorough analysis of the government's repressive policy and the communication strategies of resistance, during the protests as well as in the dramatic on-going aftermath, the volume has wide international and interdisciplinary appeal, suitable for those with an interest in globalization, communication and media, politics, and social change." (Publisher description)
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"The integration of traditionally isolated Central/ Eastern Europe into larger, worldwide trends has fundamentally changed the way we look at the media in this region. This volume proposes to address the transition of the media and communication industries in the contemporary period. The contributio
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ns discuss, among other things, the obstacles that still remain for the media to play an effective watchdog role in the new democracies, and whether the advent of the Internet and social media has helped or hindered the transformation to a powerful, independent media. The discussion further examines whether advertising agencies have targeted postcommunist citizens differently than those in Western European countries and if the media markets in the post- communist region are fundamentally different than in Western Europe and North America. A second focus of the volume is the media coverage of social issues like domestic violence, which is intended to draw attention to these issues and influence policy in a more aware and open society. This establishes the trend of post- communist media following the example of western media practice." (Publisher description)
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"Journalism is considered as fourth pillar of any democratic society and it is only a Journalist who can take many challenges to bring truth in front of society. But sometimes journalist has to face difficult and stressful conditions while working in field where they have serious threat for their li
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fe even. In this paper researcher is trying to explore various challenging and stressful conditions of Indian journalists along with the data which reveals that why India is considered a dangerous country for journalists. Mostly secondary data is taken to analyze various aspects of working conditions of journalist. Through this paper the actual dangerous conditions for Indian journalist will be analyzed and explored." (Abstract)
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"The first two years of the Xi Jinping administration saw a thorough reconfiguration of Internet governance. This reconfiguration created a centralized and integrated institutional framework for information technologies, in support of an ambitious agenda to place digital technologies at the heart of
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propaganda, public opinion and social control work. Conversely, the autonomy and spontaneity of China’s online sphere was vastly reduced, as the leadership closed channels for public deliberation. This article reviews the institutional and regulatory changes that have taken place between 2012 and 2014, and analyses the methods and purposes of control they imply." (Abstract)
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"This article analyzes the 2015 campaign by net neutrality advocates against Facebook’s Free Basics service in India, and argues that their victory can be best understood by analyzing their privileged place in an India that imagines itself high tech and global. The advocates, predominantly tech wo
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rkers, loosely organized under the banner of Save the Internet (STI) echoing the net neutrality debate in the United States. The article assesses the competing claims and modes of contention of both Facebook and STI, and examines how STI’s appeals were able to mobilize public opinion in record numbers. I argue that STI formed a ‘recursive public’, which practiced a technopolitics that resonated within the broader narrative of technocultural nationalism championed by the current ruling party. I trace the historical origins of this dominant discourse that eventually led the regulator to ban all zero-ratings plans, including Free Basics." (Abstract)
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"This study examines the existence of criminal defamation and insult laws in the territory of the 57 participating States of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In doing so, it offers a broad, comparative overview of the compliance of OSCE participating States’ legislat
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ion with international standards and best practices in the field of defamation law and freedom of expression. The primary purpose of the study is to identify relevant provisions in law. Although the study does include examples of the usage of these provisions, it is not an analysis of legal practice [...] The study is divided into two sections. The first section offers conclusions according to each of the principal categories researched and in reference to international standards on freedom of expression. The second section provides the detailed research findings for each country, including relevant examples. As the study’s title suggests, the primary research category is general criminal laws on defamation and insult. However, this study also covers special laws protecting the reputation or honour of particular persons or groups of people (e.g., presidents, public officials, deceased persons); special laws protecting the ‘honour’ of the state and state symbols; and blasphemy and religious insult laws." (About this study, page 2)
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"This report examines the social media strategies of a sample of six leading English-language Indian news organisations, two newspapers (Hindustan Times and The Indian Express), two television stations (NDTV and News18), and two digital-born organisations (Firstpost and The Quint). The context is ex
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tensive mobile internet access across India and a large and growing number of social media users, which have led news organisations to invest in social media. The organisations we focus on are oriented towards a predominantly affluent and urban English-speaking elite, and thus not representative of the industry as a whole, but they do provide a starting point for understanding how Indian news media are handling the challenges and opportunities that come with the rise of social media platforms. On the basis of interviews with senior editors and executives, as well as analysis of the Facebook and Twitter output of each organisation, we find that: Facebook is the most important social media platform for all the organisations covered here, in part because of its very large user base, but also because the company has collaborated actively with a number of Indian publishers. Twitter is seen as important for breaking news and for reaching elites, but has fewer users, drives less traffic, provides less support, and offers fewer opportunities for monetisation. News organisations take different strategic and operational approaches to social media. Strategically, most of the organisations covered here primarily pursue an on-site strategy oriented towards driving social media referrals to their website (where content can be monetised through advertising), though the recently launched digital-born organisation The Quint has embraced a greater off-site component, and has built large audiences via social media. Operationally, several organisations operate with a centralised social media team that creates, curates, and promotes content across social media, but some operate with decentralised teams where people across the newsroom are responsible for social media." (Executive summary)
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"Under the heading “Inclusive, independent media in a new democracy”, the 5th annual Myanmar Media Development Conference took place 7 – 8 November 2016 in Yangon, the first to be held under the new democratically elected government. The conference featured government representatives, media ow
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ners, human rights activists, and media practitioners from different ethnic backgrounds. A less stringent, hardtalk-like format paved the way for a less formal and more frank discussion than that of previous years. Gender inequality in media and the challenges of ethnic and community media were at the heart of discussions, where Minister of Information, U Pe Myint, expressed continued commitment to the media reform process. “This year’s meeting theme recognises that for media to develop, the country’s diverse voices, in terms of gender and ethnicity, must also be considered.” The exceptionally high turnout of more than 300 representatives from the media, government, military, judiciary, civil society and international press freedom organisations at the meeting was, if anything, a clear illustration of the continued sense of importance invested in the media reform process in Myanmar." (Page 7)
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"More than US $441 million was spent on media development worldwide in 2012, with African countries receiving 28% of that amount. This funding came from a variety of sources, including both established Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries and emerging donors such as China. These countrie
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s and their funds represent a plethora of diverse governmental systems as well as media systems, such as public service broadcasting, privatised media, community media and, in the case of China, state-run media. This paper looks at the divergent approaches to media and development promoted by both DAC countries and China, and how ideologies have led these actors to pursue similar styles of public diplomacy and political intervention through the front of media development aid." (Abstract)
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"Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice
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has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology. Online content manipulation contributed to a seventh consecutive year of overall decline in internet freedom, along with a rise in disruptions to mobile internet service and increases in physical and technical attacks on human rights defenders and independent media. Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech." (Page 1)
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