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Practices of Self-Censorship Among Nepali Journalists

Samiksha Koirala

In: Handbook of Research on Combating Threats to Media Freedom and Journalist Safety

Sadia Jamil (ed.)

Hershey, PA: IGI Global (2020), pp. 72-82

"Although Nepal has entered a new era of democracy and press freedom since 2006, self-censorship still exists in the reporting/editing of many Nepali journalists. Nepal has more than 100 years of press history, most of it has faced pressure from the government if not censorship. Drawing upon intervi ... more

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Security challenges for journalists and the mass media in advancing free speech in war torn countries: The case of Afghanistan

Mohammad Tamim Sediqi, Farid Sufian Shuaib

Journal of Islamic Law, volume 16, issue 1 (2020), pp. 59-77

"The challenges faced by journalists and mass media in war torn countries are serious. The same could be said to be the case in Afghanistan. Though freedom of speech and of the mass media are among the on-going struggles of the Afghan people after the fall of the Taliban regime, it is worrying that ... more

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Digital Hinduism

Xenia Zeiler (ed.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), 283 pp.

"Digital Religion does not simply refer to religion as it is carried out online, but more broadly studies how digital media interrelate with religious practice and belief. This collection explores Digital Hinduism and consequentially studies how Hinduism is expressed in the digital sphere and how Hi ... more

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Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia
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Tina Burrett, Jeff Kingston (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), xii, 402 pp.

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Documenting Trauma in Comics: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories, and Graphic Reportage

Dominic Davies, Candida Rifkind (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2020), xxi, 345 pp.

"Why are so many contemporary comics and graphic narratives written as memoirs or documentaries of traumatic events? Is there a specific relationship between the comics form and the documentation and reportage of trauma? How do the interpretive demands made on comics readers shape their relationship ... more

The Evolution of Entertainment in India

Kumud Ghosal, Jeevika Kapadia, Ashwini Sirsikar, Sasha Francis

Ipsos (2020), 11 pp.

"Television was introduced in India in 1959 but for many years it was limited to state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan, which had one channel with twice-weekly, one-hour programs. However, there has been a marked shift in the television entertainment options available in India today, with 48 paid-for ... more

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An Empirical Comparison of Technologically Mediated Advertising in Under-Connected Populations

Mustafa Naseem, Bilal Saleem, Sacha Ahmad, Jay Chen, Agha Ali Raza

Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, April 2020;Association of Computing Machinery (2020), 13 pp.

"Information and Communication Technology interventions have the potential to improve outcomes in health and other development sectors in low-income settings. Large-scale impact, however, remains the central challenge for the HCI4D community as significant and diverse resources are typically require ... more

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Social Media and Disinformation in War Propaganda: How Afghan Government and the Taliban Use Twitter

Hazrat M. Bahar

Media Asia, volume 47, issue 1-2 (2020), pp. 34-46

"This study examines disinformation and propaganda in war in the age of information particularly through social media. It analyzes Twitter's posts of the Afghan government and the Taliban, from January to March 2018. For understanding disinformation, 952 tweets of both parties were crosschecked with ... more

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Television and the Afghan Culture Wars

Wazhmah Osman

Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2020), 288 pp.

"Fieldwork from across Afghanistan allowed Osman to record the voices of Afghan media producers and people from all sectors of society. In this moving work, Afghans offer their own seldom-heard views on the country's cultural progress and belief systems, their understandings of themselves, and the r ... more

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‘Picturing Afghan Women’ for Western audiences: The Afghan perspective

Saumava Mitra

Journalism, volume 21, issue 6 (2020), pp. 800-820

"As the United States engages with the Taliban in a peace process that might return them to influence within Afghanistan, concerns are rising regarding the future status of Afghan women. In this background, this article returns to the much studied subject of the portrayal of Afghan women in Western ... more

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Digital Inequalities in the Global South

Massimo Ragnedda, Anna Gladkova (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2020), xvii, 372 pp.

"This book discusses how digital inequalities today may lead to other types of inequalities in the Global South. Contributions to this collection move past discussing an access problem - a binary division between 'haves and have-nots' - to analyse complex inequalities in the internet use, benefits, ... more

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MOOCs and Open Education in the Global South: Challenges, Successes, and Opportunities
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Ke Zhang, Curtis J. Bonk, Thomas C. Reeves, Thomas H. Reynolds (eds.)

New York: Routledge (2020), xxx, 358 pp.

"With e-learning technologies evolving and expanding at high rates, organizations and institutions around the world are integrating massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other open educational resources (OERs). MOOCs and Open Education in the Global South explores the initiatives that are leveragi ... more

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Jurisprudence Shaping Digital Rights in South Asia

Divya Srinivasan, Gayatri Khandhadai

Association for Progressive Communications (APC);Cyrilla Project (2020), 54 pp.

"The objective of this report is to make available a resource that can be used by lawyers, policy experts and civil society to gauge the trajectory of judicial discourse on digital rights and use this as a tool to advocate for greater protections. This is not a compendium of all cases relating to th ... e topics dealt with. For studying the cases, the researchers developed a workbook that collated decisions available in online databases including CYRILLA and the Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression database. Resources developed by national groups on the state of digital rights in their countries provided critical guidance. The cases selected naturally fell into three categories of Access, Privacy and Freedom of expression. A key challenge faced, while developing this research, relates to collection of data. In many of the countries (except India), case laws are not easily available on free, open and searchable case law databases. Judgements and orders are often not available or are difficult to access on official court websites. In some countries, many of the decisions or orders relating to digital rights were not reported and thus were inaccessible. In a few instances, particularly for Nepal and Pakistan, some judgements were not available in English and reliance had to be placed on the analysis of the judgement provided by researchers with knowledge of the local language. The countries selected share similar legal systems and challenges in the exercise and enjoyment of digital rights. Some of the issues covered by the report include discussions around access to the internet and its impact on other rights as well as network shutdowns. Judicial pronouncements in relation to privacy, surveillance, national identity programmes, data protection have been analysed across jurisdictions. A significant number of cases studied related to challenges surrounding freedom of expression. Judgements on access to the internet indicate that there is some recognition of the central role the internet and connectivity play in the lives of all individuals. Cases discussed in this report include judgements relating to equitable telecast rights, instances where use of mobile phones were prohibited, providing limited internet access to prisoners, recognition of medium of information being protected and multiple cases on network shutdowns." (Overview and refelections, page 7) more

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Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship

Laura Brueck, Jacob Smith, Neil Verma (eds.)

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2020), vi, 330 pp.

"Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship addresses the multifaceted roles sound plays in Indian cultures and media, and enacts a sonic turn in South Asian Studies by understanding sound in its own social and cultural contexts. "Scapes, Sites, and Circulations" considers the spatial and circu ... more

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A Study on Open Voice Data in Indian Languages

BizAugmentor Global Services

Bonn: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (2020), 56 pp.

"This research aims at finding the current state of (open) voice datasets in Indian languages, including information about their volume, quality, mode of collection, and availability. The present research also explores the challenges for the creation and maintenance of open voice datasets in India. ... more

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Images and Misinformation in Political Groups: Evidence from WhatsApp in India

Kiran Garimella, Dean Eckles

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, volume 1, issue 5 (2020), 12 pp.

"WhatsApp is a key medium for the spread of news and rumors, often shared as images. We study a large collection of politically-oriented WhatsApp groups in India, focusing on the period leading up to the 2019 Indian national elections. By labeling samples of random and popular images, we find that a ... more

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Minority and Indigenous Trends 2020: Focus on Technology
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Peter Grant (ed.)

London: Minority Rights Group International (2020), 189 pp.

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Media and Conflict in the Social Media Era in China

Shixin Ivy Zhang

Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan (2020), xiv, 160 pp.

"This book explores the media and conflict relationship in the age of social media through the lens of China. Inspired by the concepts of medialization of conflict and actor-network theory, this book centers on four main actors in wars and conflicts: social media platform, mainstream news organizati ... more

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What Compels Journalists to Take a Step Back? Contextualizing the Media Laws and Policies of Bangladesh

Janina Islam Abir, Tanbir Farhad Shamim

In: Handbook of Research on Combating Threats to Media Freedom and Journalist Safety

Sadia Jamil (ed.)

Hershey, PA: IGI Global (2020), pp. 38-53

"Reports by international organizations suggest that physical violence and threats against journalists and bloggers continued with impunity in Bangladesh, resulting in the country being ranked as 146 in the World Press Freedom Index 2018. Considering the increasing incidents of violence against jour ... more