"In 2008, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) proposed some guidelines to radio broadcasters designed to activate the recovery of younger listeners. They did this after observing that radio’s penetration among the youngest sectors was in decline. According to this report, the key to halting this
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decrease was to join forces with the Internet, since the latter accounted for the main lack of interest in radio among this particular demographic, especially as far as music radio was concerned. The main focus of the guidelines was therefore on the online environment. What was recommended was that attention should be paid to website development and promotion with particular emphasis on the issue of interactivity. However, taking these steps might not in itself be enough to halt young people’s loss of interest in radio. Understanding and interpreting this disaffection also requires the use of methodological research tools—including the study of quantitative data provided by audience measurement companies, organisations that analyze the listening habits and expectations of young people. In this chapter, the methodological tools designed to address this communicative issue will be examined in some depth. The findings confirm that a new approach is needed for the study of radio audiences." (Abstract)
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"The current five-year Ukraine Media Project (U-Media) runs from October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2016 and is implemented by Internews. U-Media builds on the previous eight years of the Strengthening Independent Media in Ukraine Project, also known as U-Media and also implemented by Internews. The p
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roject has four objectives, with varying degrees of Level of Effort (LOE) prioritization included in parentheses: 1) Support and Promote Freedom of Speech and Media Independence (30%), 2) Increase the Variety of News Sources and Improve News Quality (40%), 3) Improve the Enabling Environment for Media and Freedom of Speech (20%), and 4) Improve Organizational Capacity of Ukrainian Media CSOs (10%) According to the original Request for Applications, at least 55% of the U-Media budget, originally $14 million (which has since increased to $15.85 million), should be used to fund local Ukrainian media organizations. U-Media provides grants to three types of beneficiaries— institutional partners, core partners, and emerging and short-term partners—to achieve these four objectives." (Project background, page vi)
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"Strengthening Independent Media (SIM) in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a 5-year $5.481 million activity, which was launched in October 2010, financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and implemented by the Internews, with partners Annenberg School of Communications at
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the University of Pennsylvania and the Media Center Sarajevo (MCS). SIM Activity originally was designed as a comprehensive media assistance program to support traditional and online media outlets, various journalists’ associations in BiH, the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA), the state regulator for broadcast media, and the Press Council (PC), the BiH self-regulating body for print media, through a $1.0 million small grants program with additional funds for capacity building and resource development. Two years into the Activity’s implementation, Internews and its partners, based on directions from the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and USAID/BiH recalibrated its media development strategy for BiH and streamlined its tasks into the following components: 1. Support the quality and growth of online media outlets, technologies, and sources; 2. Build the quality of investigative reporting and resources; 3. Develop local capacity expertise and practice in media policy, media law, and media literacy. SIM’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system employed the International Research and Exchanges Board’s (IREX) Media Sustainability Index (MSI) as the primary indicator to measure the Activity’s overall success, along with other outcome, output, and input indicators. This performance evaluation examined the results of the five-year media assistance in BiH and the effects of the program on the BiH’s overall media landscape." (Executive summary)
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"Instead of seeking to provide an objective definition of hate speech, the paper’s empirical approach highlights that context matters. More specifically, analysis of the political and socio-economic context in which the speech act occurs and consideration of the nature of the speaker and audience
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– including their impact and transmission – allows for a nuanced and informed approach to evaluate hate speech, and how this impacts democratisation processes. The paper presents: a general discussion of freedom of speech and its relationship with hate speech; a brief discussion on the definitions of hate speech and international legislation; a short discussion of hate speech in the four country contexts of the MeCoDEM project: Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa." (Executive summary)
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"The majority think their national media provide a diversity of views, but most say it is not free from political or commercial pressures. Two thirds of respondents (66%) agree that their national media provide a diversity of views and opinions, and the majority in all but one Member State agree (Gr
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eece is the only exception). More than four in ten EU citizens (44%) say the level of diversity of views and opinions in the national media are the same as it was five years ago, 29% think there is more diversity, while 18% say there is less. Almost four in ten respondents (38%) agree their national media provide information free from political or commercial pressure – the majority disagree (57%). There are only nine Member States where the majority agree. Just over a third of respondents agree their national public service media are free from political pressure (35%), but the majority (60%) disagree. Almost half (45%) think their national media are as free and independent as they were five years ago, while 18% say it is more free and independent, and 28% think it is less so. A small majority (53%) agree their national media provide trustworthy information, while 44% think it does not. In 19 Member States, the majority of respondents agree their national media provide trustworthy information. Radio is most likely to be considered reliable (66%), followed by television and newspapers (both 55%). Far fewer respondents consider social media to be reliable (32%). Radio is considered the most reliable media in 25 countries." (Key findings, page 4)
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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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"Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob Einwanderer in der Berichterstattung je nach Herkunft unterschiedlich dargestellt werden. Dazu wurden Artikel der Tageszeitungen Welt, FAZ, SZ und taz aus dem Jahr 2014 inhaltsanalytisch untersucht. Mittels hierarchischer Clusteranalyse auf Akteursebene (n = 596)
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lassen sich fünf Frames von Einwanderern ermitteln: Kriminelle, Nützliche, Kostenintensive, Integrationswillige und Willkommene. Einige dieser Frames korrespondieren stark mit bestimmten Nationalitäten. Einwanderer aus Herkunftsländern, die eine größere kulturelle Nähe zu Deutschland aufweisen (z. B. Südosteuropa) werden tendenziell negativer geframed als Einwanderer aus kulturell ferneren Ländern (z. B. Asien/ Naher Osten und Afrika). Politisch eher konservativ orientierte Zeitungen verwenden im Verhältnis mehr negative Frames." (Abstract)
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"Ukrainian mass media outlets are mostly driven by their owners’ individual interests and thus serve as instruments to securing political and economic power. Corruption and lack of financial transparency further inhibit the healthiness of the country’s media landscape. The Media Ownership Monito
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r Ukraine, carried out from July to October 2016 together with the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), showed that the Ukraine media is prone to power plays, more than ever. The Media Ownership Monitor pinpoints that concentration is especially high within the audio-visual and radio markets. The major four TV owners – StarLight Media, 1+1 Media, Inter Media and Media Group Ukraine – represent an audience share of more than three quarters. The top four radio groups even combine a reach of 92% of the audience in Ukraine: Tavr Radio Group, Ukrainian Media Holding, Business Radio Group and TRK Lux. Those media groups mainly belong to some of the richest in Ukraine, amongst others Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov. The print media and online sectors are less concentrated. Online media in particular offer much more pluralism and choice to Internet savvy Ukrainians." (http://www.mom-rsf.org)
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"This report provides an overview of core comparative findings from MeCoDEM interviews with journalists in Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa. It investigates the role of journalistic actors in transitional societies across a set of comparable democratisation conflicts and themes of inquiry: jour
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nalistic work practices, role perceptions, and ethical principles and dilemmas. Empirically, the study builds on qualitative semi-structured face-to face in-depth interviews with 100 professional journalists working for local news organisations in the four countries." (Executive summary)
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"Structural conditions are to be understood as the totality of (formal and informal) orders and structures that characterise media and journalism in a certain space, most commonly, a country. Eleven interrelated and interdependent dimensions of structural conditions relevant to media and journalism
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have been extracted and adapted from existing literature, guiding structured and comprehensive analysis within specific (country) contexts: (1) historical development, (2) political system, (3) political culture, (4) media freedom, (5) level of state control and regulation of media by the state, (6) media ownership and financing, (7) structure of media markets and patterns of information distribution, (8) orientation of media, (9) political/societal activity and parallelism of media, (10) journalism culture, and (11) journalistic professionalism. Country reports feature a unique set and combination of structural factors shaping media and journalism in the four countries, demonstrating the importance of conflict communication as a case study with regard to structural conditions. For example, different degrees of democratisation regarding media structures become evident in varying levels of media freedom and state interference in the media sector. Moreover, there are significant differences in media landscapes and the structure of media markets, reflecting the different size, economic situation, infrastructure and cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity of the four countries, as well as the differing degrees of literacy and spending power of inhabitants." (Executive summary)
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"Ukrainian journalists find it hard to remain neutral and independent when covering the conflict in their country. Many are torn between feelings of patriotism and their role as detached observers, new research has found. Of the 47 Ukrainian journalists, representing 42 different media outlets, inte
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rviewed for the study, most said they tried to adhere to ethical and journalistic standards when reporting the war in the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine, but added they did not want to ‘hurt’ the Ukrainian side through their reporting. The research found that few Ukrainian newsrooms offer guidance or support to journalists on how to cover the conflict. There are no written rules or agreed ethical standards and professional judgments are usually left to the journalists themselves. Ukrainian reporters working in the conflict zone tend to rely on their ‘gut instinct’, rather than instructions, the study revealed." (Publisher description)
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"The purpose of this assessment is to compile a general portrait of the media landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in order to determine the broad status of reforms and needs in the media sector and make recommendations for potential further USAID involvement in the sector. The assessment team
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addressed the following three main questions: 1. What areas of the BiH media sector require the most urgent assistance that can be provided in the next five years? 2. What types of assistance might be the most effective in those areas, and on what scale? 3. What are the comparative advantages of US assistance to media outlets?" (Executive summary)
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"Only 8% of respondents stated that the media in Moldova exhibit, to a very large extent, a responsible behavior toward their audiences. The majority of respondents or 56% stated they were dissatisfied with the lack of responsibility of the national media. One in ten respondents considered him/herse
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lf very informed; another five in ten respondents are quite satisfied in terms of perceived level of information. Television is still the main source of social and political news in Moldova, with 65% of respondents citing it as the preferred source, followed by the Internet (websites) (24%), and the social networking sites and radio stations with 5% each. According to the study “Measuring the perceptions of sociopolitical news by the media audience in the Republic of Moldova”, realized in October 2015, information sources have their specific audiences. Television is preferred mostly by occupationally inactive people, aged over 45 years, with secondary and low levels of education. Young people, with higher levels of education, who are occupationally active, and live in municipalities show preference for getting information online." (Page 5)
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"Of the 939 identified main media literacy stakeholders, over a third were categorised as “civil society” (305), followed by “public authorities” (175) and “academia” (161). Over two-thirds of them do not have a statutory responsibility in this area and base their involvement on a differ
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ent motivation. 189 networks were identified and the vast majority of them (135) are operating at national level. Since the level of activity differs a lot between countries, of the maximum of 580 projects (20 possible projects for each of the 29 respondents, but not all of them were able to detect 20), only 547 were identified. The most common project type is “resources” (173); the second is “end-user engagement” (107). These two together account for more than half of all analysed projects, showing that providing frontline support to citizens is a priority. As to the a ddressed media literacy skills, “critical thinking” was the clear winner, being dealt with by 403 of the 547 projects, followed by “media use” (385). This trend is also confirmed by the case study analysis of the most significant 145 projects, which also feature projects on “intercultural dialogue” (46 of 145), including skills around challenging radicalisation and hate speech online." (Executive summary, page 3-4)
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"Incidents of physical violence and – worse still – impunity for those who commit such acts continue in Croatia, an unacceptable situation for an EU member state. On the other, legal provisions such as the country’s criminal defamation and shaming laws have been abused to punish investigative
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journalists for doing their jobs. Such trends can and must be reversed. But it is also clear that ‘informal’ limits to free expression, which can be more easily disguised and hence denied, are at work in Croatia. These limits include excessive political influence in the media as well as politically motivated discourse that seeks to undercut critical journalism by singling out its practitioners as “activists” or even “traitors”. These patterns have an impact both on the production of content, through direct pressure or self-censorship, and on the reception of content by the public. The most glaring example of recent political influence is the recent government’s obvious interference at the public broadcaster HRT." (Conclusion, page 15)
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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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"In Belarus more than 70 percent of those working in the media are women. The number of women producing media content is increasing. Women are well represented in middle management positions, but men still dominate positions at the highest level, with the highest wages. Journalism is a low-income pr
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ofession in Belarus. Many journalists, both men and women, must take on extra jobs in order to provide the necessities for their families. Journalism is not considered a prestigious profession – wages are low and it is difficult to realize ambitions. This is why men are leaving this area; journalism is becoming an industry in which mostly women work. In Belarus, both men and women have equal possibilities to study journalism. However, it is women who mainly study journalism, further promoting the feminization of the profession." (Key findings, page 7)
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