"The primary objective of the 2015 NIMP Mission was to provide technical inputs to activities underway under UNESCO’s Safety of Journalists project, particularly in terms of setting up an independent national mechanism on safety at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Another key objective
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was to advocate in favour of international best practices on press freedom, freedom of expression (FOE) and the right to information (RTI). Unlike previous missions, where advocacy had been the main objective, the 2015 Mission focused on three areas: The architecture of the NHRC mechanism, including a review of the procedures, by-laws, structure and organisation for making it an effective tool for ensuring safety of journalists and free expression advocates; Advocating in favour of respect for international standards on free expression and the safety of journalists, including via enabling provisions on free expression in the new constitution; Activities relating to the UNESCO safety project where there was need for international technical support." (IMS website)
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"The aim of the present book is to provide both empirical and theoretical input to the discussions of the role of journalism and media in conflict and post-conflict situations and in the often rather muddy waters between them. Together, the contributions to this book from different parts of the worl
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d emphasise that discussions about post-conflict situations will gain from including the media. At the same time, the contributions problematise the concept of post-conflict and powerfully illustrate that the phase between war/conflict and peace is neither unidirectional nor linear, as the use of the concept sometimes seems to imply. Reaching a peace agreement or arranging for the termination of hostilities is, in itself, no guarantee that peace can be secured. The examples from Afghanistan, Colombia and South Sudan in this book show this up clearly. Remaining post-conflict societal friction may even be as threatening to long-lasting peace as the war itself. Hence, post-conflict may be seen as a “conflict situation in which open warfare has come to an end. However, such situations remain tense for years or decades and can easily relapse into large-scale violence” (Junne and Verkoren 2005)." (Introduction, pages 16-17)
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"While acknowledging the significant contributions of the public service broadcasting heritage in the Global North in efforts to establish such provision in the Global South, the contributors explain why simple imitation is unlikely to ever work well enough across such a diverse range of countries a
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nd regions with crucial differences in their histories, languages, cultures and experiences." (Publisher description)
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"The percentage of Pakistanis using the Internet increased by 37.5% between 2009 and 2013, though overall internet penetration remains very low with only 11% of the population having access to the Internet". (Page 9) "Heavy internet users in Pakistan are very young (72% under 30 years of age), large
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ly male (59%), and highly educated (72% with at least some university schooling). Light users are much more likely to be over thirty years of age (42% for light compared to 18% for heavy users), women (47% for light vs. 36% for heavy users), but more highly educated (38% of light users have graduate degree vs. 31% for heavy users) [...] Television news is by far the most popular source of information among Pakistani Internet users, with 80% of survey respondents selecting this communication channel as one of their three top sources of information. After television news, social networking sites are the most commonly cited source of information used by Pakistani Internet users with 55% of respondents selecting it as one of their top three sources." (Executive summary)
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"This United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report documents the national state of journalists' safety and the issue of impunity by providing an overview of the safety situation of journalists in Nepal. It also examines the context of safety and the responsibility
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of all stakeholders in addressing the issue of journalists' safety in the country. Based on UNESCO's Media Development Indicators (MDI), UNESCO's Journalists' Safety Indicators (JSI) are developed within the context of the endorsement of the UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, providing a baseline of knowledge against which progress can be assessed. Using various methods, including document analysis and interviews with various informants, this research documents the actors and actions in place for the protection of journalists in Nepal, grouped around 4 key indicator categories, namely: the roles and response of the State and other political actors; the roles and response of civil society and academia; the roles and response of media and intermediaries; and the roles and response of the UN system and other extra-national actors with a presence in Nepal. In an overview of the situation of journalists' safety in Nepal, this report also provides information on the number of threats and attacks on journalists in the course of their work. Appendix one describes the methodology and sources of data in more detail." (Abstract)
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"Encryption is a hot topic in the current global discussion on Internet governance. This research delves into the subject, to outline a global overview of the various means of encryption, their availability and their potential applications in the media and communications landscape. The research expl
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ains how the deployment of encryption is affected by different areas of law and policy, and it offers detailed case studies of encryption in selected jurisdictions. It analyzes in-depth the role of encryption in the media and communications landscape, and the impact on different services, entities and end users. Built on this exploration and analysis, the research provides recommendations on encryption policy that are useful for various stakeholders. These include signaling the need to counter the lack of gender sensitivity in the current debate, and also highlighting ideas for enhancing “encryption literacy." (Back cover)
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"In this report, we have analysed how the Hindustan Times, Dainik Jagran, and Malayala Manorama are changing their newsroom organisation and journalistic work to adapt to an increasingly digital media environment. Our analysis shows that all three newspapers are investing in expanding their digital
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activities to pursue new opportunities as digital media become more important in India, and print relatively less so. All are investing significantly more effort in digital operations than they did in the past, and more than many other Indian newspapers. This includes investments in new technology and staff with new expertise, as well as training of existing staff. We find important variations in how they are changing. At the Hindustan Times, senior editorial and managerial leaders have worked together to integrate print and digital newsrooms into one cross-platform operation equally adept at serving audiences across print, website, mobile app, and social channels. At Malayala Manorama, and especially Dainik Jagran, the transition seems to have been led more exclusively by management, and the focus has been on expanding parallel digital operations that are not part of the print newspaper organisation. By creating a brand of their own, distinct from but built on that of their print newspapers, opening up new offices and hiring new personnel to perform digital news work, Jagran Online and Manorama Online partially circumvented the inertia that often hampers attempt to change an incumbent organisation where people are proud of what they have accomplished in the past. Because they are building parallel units, they do not have to deal with the issues that arise when moving from a print to a digital or platform-agnostic newsroom." (Conclusion)
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"Two giant broadcast networks dominate the Philippine media industry both in terms of economic market power and audience reach, which gives them a major potential to shape public opinion. Despite a high number of media outlets and being described as one of the most freewheeling media systems in the
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region, Philippine media continuous to be owned by and to depend on the economic and political elite [...] Five families in the Forbes List of 2016 Philippines’ Richest are in media, four of which made their money predominantly from media. Even though the political and economic elite are interweaved, those links have not led to targeted discriminatory actions in the recent past, with in general little political control being openly exerted. It poses, however, a potential risk to media as soon as the political elite start to exploit the vulnerability of media owners." (http://www.mom-rsf.org)
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"Described as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their
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use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise ‘homeless’." (Back cover)
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"Die Fallanalyse hat gezeigt, dass eine Erzählung vom Krieg 1992-93 propagiert wird, die einer abchasischen Version des Narrationsschemas 'Die Vertreibung von fremden Feinden' entspricht. Ein zentrales Element der Erzählung ist zudem, so ergab die Interpretation, eine betont positive Darstellung d
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es Kriegsalltags. Durch sie wird einerseits das bereits existierende Bild der heldenhaften Soldaten gestützt. Andererseits wird der Nachkriegsgeneration 20 Jahre nach Kriegsende eine gewissermaßen harmlose Version des Kriegsgeschehens angeboten, mittels Film und Konzerten werden begleitend affektive Erlebnisse ermöglicht. So soll die Identifikation der Nachgeborenen mit diesem Teil des abchasischen Gründungsmythos, den sie selbst nicht erlebt haben, angeregt werden." (Seite 37)
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"In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country“ (Wainaina, 2012) – was der kenianische Autor und Gründer des Literaturmagazins Kwani Binyavanga Wainaina in seiner satirischen Gebrauchsanweisung How to Write about Africa SchriftstellerInnen empfiehlt, wird in Medienbeiträgen zu Afrika be
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ständig umgesetzt. Wenngleich die Berichterstattung zum afrikanischen Kontinent und ihre Kontextbedingungen, zumindest im deutschsprachigen Raum, keineswegs intensiv erforscht sind, besteht zu ihrer Ausgestaltung ein wissenschaftlicher Common Sense: Der Kontinent wird medial undifferenziert als homogene Einheit voller Probleme dargestellt, die eurozentristische Berichterstattung konzentriert sich vorwiegend auf die „4Ks“ – Kriege, Korruption, Krankheiten und Katastrophen. Das alltägliche Leben wird dabei meist ebenso ausgeblendet wie positive Entwicklungen, die von AfrikanerInnen initiiert wurden. Vielmehr werden diese als passive HilfeempfängerInnen gezeichnet, die auf ihre Rettung durch den helfenden Westen warten." (Editorial, Seite 2)
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"Tom McDonald spent 15 months living in a small rural Chinese community researching how the residents use social media in their daily lives. His ethnographic findings suggest that, far from being left behind, many rural Chinese people have already integrated social media into their everyday experien
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ce. Throughout his ground-breaking study, McDonald argues that social media allows rural people to extend and transform their social relationships by deepening already existing connections with friends known through their school, work or village, while also experimenting with completely new forms of relationships through online interactions with strangers. By juxtaposing these seemingly opposed relations, rural social media users are able to use these technologies to understand, capitalise on and challenge the notions of morality that underlie rural life." (Back cover)
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"This volume brings together scholars from different disciplines and nations to examine and assess the effectiveness of China's soft power initiatives in Africa. It throws light not only on China's engagement with Africa but also on how China's increasing influence is received in the African media."
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(Publisher description)
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"This book has presented a critical, historically grounded analysis of the role of the war correspondent. It has highlighted the risks, the problems and the failures that have defined the role but it has also given credit where that is due and acknowledged the inspirational example of correspondents
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such as William Howard Russell, Morgan Philips Price, Martha Gellhorn, Wilfred Burchett, John Pilger and Robert Fisk. Their work seems to bear testament to the ideal beloved of all journalists and writers, of ‘telling truth to power’. But as Arundhati Roy has argued, ‘Power owns the truth [and] knows the truth just as well if not better than the powerless know the truth’ (2004, page 68). In view of everything that has gone before in this book, I think she is right. Telling truth to power does not change or lessen the risks and dangers that accompany the journalist in the war zone. And as we have seen, the risks are not equal; the level of special training, protection and institutional support journalists receive depends on the size and wealth of their media employer." (Conclusion, page 214)
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"This thesis is a theoretically framed and historically informed sociological analysis of how digital technology usage shapes religious identity in Pakistan. The development literature is dominated by assumptions of technologically driven progress towards secularisation and studies of technology pro
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jects, yet there are few empirical studies of everyday ICT day use, and religion remains significant in Pakistan. To explain this, I draw on theoretical literature, the Pakistan religious identity literature and twelve months of fieldwork (2014-2015) to present an analysis of how Facebook shapes the enactment of religious identity by young people in three cities in the Punjab, Pakistan [...] My empirical findings show that the new technologies of social media, mobile phones and mobile internet interact with public discourse and everyday practice to shape religious identity. First, I show this by describing how Facebook’s construction as a blasphemous technology strengthens existing discourses of religious nationalism. Second, I show how Facebook’s technological discourses of singular authenticity shape the enactment of religious identity with implications for religious minorities. My final analysis theorises how the use of Facebook shapes religious identity through the emergence of what I call ‘digital secularisation’." (Abstract)
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"Being bullied has been found to have a significant impact on children’s physical and mental health, psychosocial well-being and educational performance, with lasting effects into adulthood on health, well-being and lifetime earnings. Little is known about bullying in low- and middle-income countr
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ies, however. This study uses a mixed methods approach combining survey analysis of the predictors and associations with being bullied, with qualitative data to explore the context in which bullying occurs and the social processes that underpin it. Findings show that better data collection and increased resource allocation to bullying prevention are needed. The development and evaluation of different types of effective, sustainable and scalable bullying prevention models in low- and middle-income country contexts are priorities for programming and research." (Abstract)
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"This report details how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws violate human rights, both in their substance and their application – whether this is violations of human rights by the state, or abuses of the laws by non-state actors. The laws do not meet human rights standards and lack essential safeguards t
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o minimise the risk of additional violations and abuses. It is difficult to establish precise information on the number of blasphemy cases as there is limited available data. However, data provided by human rights groups the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) shows a large increase of cases since the 1980s. For example, according to NCJP, a total of 633 Muslims, 494 Ahmadis, 187 Christians and 21 Hindus have been accused under various provisions on offences related to religion since 1987." (Executive summary, page 10)
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"After the Syrian uprising morphed into an armed struggle, the Syrian government increasingly lost control over vast areas of territory. With the loss of State control, its imposed rule on media faded, enabling media to flourish in those areas. In territories it still controlled, its grip became eve
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n tighter consequently forcing many reporters out. By the end of 2013, media workers began to flee their new acquired space, too, after the extremist group called ISIS - “the Islamic State” - showed its might and other military groups also deprived media from the freedom it desired. In addition to the Syrian government-emptied territories, this dire situation in the opposition areas led to the migration of Syrian media to other countries, mainly to neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Like other refugees, journalists had to start a new life there. They found themselves in different sets of circumstances than they had experienced at home, especially in terms of regulations and living and working conditions, and they faced threats coming both from inside and outside their host country. RSF tried to dig deeper in the situation of exiled Syrian journalists and shed more light on the humanitarian, living and working conditions of media workers, exiled in their new shelter-countries, and on the dark side of Syrian journalists’ lives when reporting on their fellow citizens’ living conditions. RSF interviewed a total of 24 journalists in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Their names are not mentioned. Most of them asked to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation against themselves or their family members still in Syria. The source of fear was the Assad regime, ISIS, other groups in Syria, the authorities of their host country as well as the media organization where they used to work or are still working." (Page 3)
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