"Through these mediations on gendered disinformation, and the variety of perspectives that the authors bring, we call into question hegemonic structures of knowledge production. The anthology forces us to call into question the very idea of objectivity, blurring lines between 'truth' and 'lies'. The
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report contains experiences where women have been harmed equally by untrue information, half-truths and narratives that reflect deep-seated biases rather than deliberate lies. For the discourse on gendered disinformation to encompass all these experiences requires a larger contemplation on what we mean by 'objective truth'. (Contribution of report, page 4)
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"This report sets out a new methodology for assessing cyber power, and then applies it to 15 states: Four members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia; Three cyber-capable allies of the Five Eyes states – France, Israel and Japan; F
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our countries viewed by the Five Eyes and their allies as cyber threats – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea; Four states at earlier stages in their cyber-power development – India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. The methodology is broad and principally qualitative, assessing each state’s capabilities in seven different categories. The cyber ecosystem of each state is analysed, including how it intersects with international security, economic competition and military affairs. On that basis the 15 states are divided into three tiers: Tier One is for states with world-leading strengths across all the categories in the methodology, Tier Two is for those with world-leading strengths in some of the categories, and Tier Three is for those with strengths or potential strengths in some of the categories but significant weaknesses in others. The conclusion is that only one state currently merits inclusion in Tier One. Seven are placed in Tier Two, and seven in Tier Three." (Back cover)
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"Starting from the assumption that media play a crucial role for populist discourses of authenticity, the volume moves beyond conventional and social media by expanding its focus to media in formal education, notably school textbooks and curricula. These two particular media formats lastingly shape
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younger generations and thus the future. The proposed volume adopts global perspectives from three postcolonial countries that are often beyond the scope of studies dealing with populist discourses and media entanglements - insights that contribute new aspects to international scholarly debates." (Publisher description)
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"This book explores the relationship between the safety of journalists and self-censorship practices around the world, including local case studies and regional and international perspectives. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the globe, Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship p
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rovides new and updated insights into patterns of self-censorship and free speech, focusing on a variety of factors that affect these issues, including surveillance, legislation, threats, violent conflict, gender-related stereotypes, digitisation and social media. The contributions examine topics such as trauma, risk and self-censorship among journalists in different regions of the world, including Central America, Estonia, Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan. The book also provides conceptual clarity to the notion of journalist self-censorship, and explores the question of how self-censorship may be studied empirically." (Publisher description)
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"Building upon long-term ethnographic research among image-makers in Delhi, Mumbai and other Indian cities, the author interrogates the dialogue between visual culture, technology and changing notions of political participation. The book explores selected artistic experiences in documentary and fict
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ion film, photography, contemporary art and digital curation that have in common a desire to engage with images as tools for social intervention. These experiences reveal images' capacity not only to narrate and represent but also to perform, do and affect. Particular attention is devoted to the 'digital', a critical landscape that offers an opportunity to re-examine the significance of images and visual culture in a rapidly changing India." (Publisher description)
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"The participants of the survey were limited to working women journalists in Kathmandu valley. Out of 87 journalists that participated in the survey two- third of journalists are young, the work force comprises between age group 20 to 40 years. Majority of journalists work in the private news media,
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where near about majority of them enrolled in the media through open competition. Similarly, over half of the journalists have experience of over 10 years but still at large, one-third of the journalists work as reporters and 18 per cent as sub-editors. With respect to the education background, more than two-third of the journalists are graduates with 68 per cent of women journalists have master’s degree and 26 per cent have bachelor’s degree. Female journalists come from the background of Humanities and Social sciences where majority of journalists have academic degree in journalism. The survey showed that that women journalists have diversified their field of news reporting. They report on different sectors such as human rights issues, education, health, art and culture, international relations, laws/ courts, politics apart from gender issues. Despite some changes over the years, the study points out challenges with respect to sustainability, working environment among women journalists. The study has also pointed out that the number of women journalists joining the field has increased but retaining human resource is a challenge which has adversely affected participation of female journalists’ participation in the leadership position." (Executive summary)
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"Caste discrimination remains one of the world’s most serious human rights issues. It is intrinsically linked with hate speech, but as this report has demonstrated, insufficient attention has been paid to the caste-based aspects of hate speech. All too often, caste-hate speech is allowed to contin
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ue unchecked, not least on social media platforms. Campaigners against caste discrimination rightly argue that unless caste is specifically mentioned in the human rights discourse instead of being “hidden” under other headlines, there is a huge risk that the issue will be ignored. This warning also applies to caste-hate speech. Consequently, it is essential that caste-hate speech is recognised as a protected characteristic in international covenants – and as a distinctive form of hate speech – and that Dalits are included in actions to mitigate caste-hate speech online and offline, at every level. Anything less will enable abusers to continue practising this form of hate speech – and condemn Dalits and other groups to even more abuse and violence." (Conclusion)
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"In 2018, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, was acquitted of the blasphemy charges that had kept her on death row for nearly a decade. The lessons learned from her case, including the international advocacy critical to her acquittal, help to create a template for advocating on behalf of other religious
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minorities facing similar charges in Pakistan. In this report, International Christian Concern (ICC) reviews Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and the experience of religious minorities under these laws. ICC goes on to analyze the Asia Bibi case and draws out important lessons that should be applied to similar, ongoing cases. This report provides the profiles of 24 current cases in which Pakistani Christians sit charged with or convicted of committing blasphemy. These 24 cases need appropriate international advocacy to come to a successful conclusion. Towards this end, this report provides practical recommendations for the international community which ICC has drawn from the Asia Bibi case and from years of experience working with Christian victims of blasphemy in Pakistan." (Executive summary)
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"This study attempts to contribute to literature that analyzes the role of Sri Lanka’s mainstream media as a producer and distributor of information disorder. For this purpose, a case study approach is used to evaluate reporting on Dr. Segu Siyabdeen Mohamed Shafi. The study focuses on the Sri Lan
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kan mainstream media’s role in three parts. First, it examines the phenomenon of information disorder in a global and Sri Lankan context. The case study of media reportage on Dr. Shafi is located within this broader phenomenon. The study next presents the quantitative and qualitative findings of five weeks of monitoring primetime TV and press news. Second, it analyzes the impact of the information disorder surrounding Dr. Shafi. Finally, the study examines responses by the government, media and media regulatory bodies to the production of information disorder in this specific case." (Introduction, pages 3-4)
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"This report examines how people in Brazil, India, the UK, and the US view news media in their countries, the factors they use when determining whether sources are trustworthy, and what ‘trust in news’ ultimately means to them [...] While we note throughout the report areas of difference between
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the four countries, such as the role played by particular forms of news or individual media figures, mainly we focus on the similarities we found, which were often striking. In most cases, study participants tended to fall back on impressions of brand quality that many said were rooted in how familiar they were with a given source and its reputation established over time based on past use, perceived partisanship, or word-of-mouth. Although many spoke about the importance of accuracy and impartiality in their assessments of trust – with individual journalists typically playing a lesser or even negative role – such terms often meant different things to different people. While a minority raised concerns about representation and whether news aligned with their lived experiences, others focused on perceived political or commercial biases or their sense that all news sources were irretrievably beholden to elite agendas." (Conclusion, page 40)
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"This report contains a range of findings about news audiences in each of the four countries [Brazil, India, United Kingdom, United States], focusing on audiences overall as well as different segments of the public categorised according to their degree of trust towards news brands in their country.
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We summarise several of the key results of our analysis here: People are more trusting of news they themselves use, including on social media, but less trusting of news they don’t use, especially news found on digital platforms [...] Many hold highly negative views about basic journalistic practices [...] The least trusting towards news tend to be older, less educated, less interested in politics, and less connected to urban centres [...] The least trusting pay less attention to and are more indifferent towards specific characteristics about how journalism is practised [...] Experience interacting with journalists is rare and familiarity with basic concepts concerning how news works is often low [...] Gaps in trust in news align with deficits in social and interpersonal trust as well as dissatisfaction with democracy." (Summary of key findings, page 8)
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"This book investigates the ways in which the mobile telephone has transformed societies around the world, bringing both opportunities and challenges. At a time when knowledge and truth are increasingly contested, the book asks how mobile technology has changed the ways in which people create, disse
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minate, and access knowledge. Worldwide, mobile internet access has surpassed desktop access, and it is estimated that by 2022 there will be an excess of 6 billion mobile phone users in the world. This widespread proliferation raises all sorts of questions around who creates knowledge, how is that knowledge shared and proliferated, and what are the structural political, economic, and legal conditions in which knowledge is accessed. The practices and power dynamics around mobile technologies are location specific. They look different depending on whether one chooses to highlight the legal, social, political, or economic context. Bringing together scholars, journalists, activists and practitioners from around the world, this book embraces this complexity, providing a multifaceted picture that acknowledges the tensions and contradictions surrounding accessing knowledge through mobile technologies. With case studies from Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Syria, Egypt, Botswana, Brazil, and the US, this book provides an important account of the changing nature of our access to knowledge, and is key reading for students, researchers, activists and policy makers with an interest in technology and access to knowledge, communication, social transformation, and global development." (Publisher description)
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"Museums and archives all over the world digitize their collections and provide online access to heritage material. But what factors determine the content, structure and use of these online inventories? This book turns to India and Europe to answer this question. It explains how museums and archives
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envision, decide and conduct digitization and online dissemination. It also sheds light on born-digital, community-based archives, which have established themselves as new actors in the field. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the chapters in the book trace digital archives from technical advancements and postcolonial initiatives to programming alternatives, editing content, and active use of digital archives." (Publisher description)
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"[...] If Afghanistan is to avoid a renewal of civil war, there is no viable alternative to Taliban rule and Taliban dialogue. Engagement with the Taliban in terms of urgently needed humanitarian aid opens avenues for cooperation in the field of cultural foreign policy and civil society support. Her
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e, the Taliban are especially open to support in the educational sector. Education, including for women, is a widespread demand in Afghanistan, even in the rural areas. As a member of civil society stressed, the Taliban are not ready to accept political activities but seem so far result-oriented in what concerns practical improvements for the Afghan population. Under seemingly non-political activities, for example competitions about daily life concerns like waste or water management, independent thinking and the respect of human rights can still be fostered. Generally, activities can be promoted with Afghan and Islamic references acceptable to the Taliban mindset. Fostering women’s rights, for example, can be done by giving the examples of the wives of the prophet Mohammed and of the relative freedoms of women in Saudi Arabia and Iran, who have more rights than those under the previous Taliban regime. As one participant states “the only progressive ideas which can be ingrained in Afghan society need to be somehow referring to internal cultural heritage Afghan and/or Islamic”. In this context, a lot of venues can be explored. Herat, for example was a major cultural centre over centuries. Afghans know also very little of the significance of historically important Islamic cities like Bukhara or Samarkand in neighbouring Uzbekistan, despite the fact that a sizable proportion of the Afghan population are Uzbek. Even more significant is the fact that Afghans who are very attached to their religion know very little of the achievement of the golden age Arabo-Islamic culture in science like mathematics, geography, astronomy, medicine or architecture or literature. There are also some classical art forms through which we can engage with the Taliban, such as poetry, as well as opportunities in contemporary comedy, where a certain criticism can be voiced and tolerated. The interplay of new and traditional media also provides unique opportunities in terms of education and human rights. Here DW-TV, Radio and internet activities can play an important role. Independent initiatives should also be promoted. These can offer considerable opportunities to connect regional civil society actors, which for one of the interviewees is one of the most effective ways of engagement “for example, feminist groups of neighbouring countries which supported feminist groups in Afghanistan”. (Conclusion, page 17)
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