"The study is focusing ‘Reporting is becoming a life threatening profession in Pakistan’ as a topic for research. International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) declared Pakistan as one of the most dangerous countries for Journalists. Amnesty International called Khuzdar ‘a graveyard for Journa
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lists’. Rank of Pakistan in the World Press Freedom Index is going down year by year. However, the number of journalists who lost their lives in Pakistan is on the rise. It would be safe to say that at least 67 journalists lost their lives in Pakistan from 2002 to 2014. It is claimed by Committee to Protect Journalists that from 1992 to 2014 majority of journalists who lost their lives in the line of duty are reporters. The situation in Pakistan has been going worse with each passing day for journalists especially for reporters since 9/11. Government as well as media organizations have failed to provide proper security to reporters resulting an increase in the number of crimes against journalists as well as the impunity in their cases. Although the conviction in the cases of two murdered reporters is a ray of hope and has improved Pakistan’s rank in Global Impunity Index but still there is a lot needed to be done in order to control the increasing rate of crimes against journalists." (Abstract)
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"This paper focuses on post-September 11, 2001 media assistance in Afghanistan at the confluence of the development and defense sectors, otherwise known as the security-development nexus. It is out of this nexus that a burgeoning press-state system developed amid an ongoing conflict between the Gove
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rnment of Afghanistan and an insurgency. What role then has the new media environment played in the campaign to win “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan since 2001 and how has this environment been shaped by the media assistance effort? This paper suggests the media assistance effort has created a new battlefield between the state and the insurgency, one in which both sides are making an argument to the people as the legitimate governing authority of the country. The argument is addressed from the state’s perspective by a qualitative review of two case studies. The first case analyzes the rise of a free and independent press over the past 15 years, which reveals a still-professionalizing media industry under threat from the insurgency, corrupt government officials, and economic pressures. The second case analyzes the role of the Government Media and Information Center (GMIC) and the network of small, regional media and information centers across the country. The GMIC network, despite unreliable funding and an evolving mission, has achieved mixed results in providing a credible voice of the government in the battle for the narrative against the Taliban. Together, the two cases reveal a successful intervention of media assistance, but an uncertain future for both sides of the press-state system." (Abstract)
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"Why has the US so dramatically failed in Afghanistan since 2001? Dominant explanations have ignored the bureaucratic divisions and personality conflicts inside the US state. This book rectifies this weakness in commentary on Afghanistan by exploring the significant role of these divisions in the US
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’s difficulties in the country that meant the battle was virtually lost before it even began. The main objective of the book is to deepen readers’ understanding of the impact of bureaucratic politics on nation-building in Afghanistan, focusing primarily on the Bush administration. It rejects the ‘rational actor’ model, according to which the US functions as a coherent, monolithic agent. Instead, internal divisions within the foreign policy bureaucracy are explored, to build up a picture of the internal tensions and contradictions that bedevilled US nation-building efforts. The book also contributes to the vexed issue of whether or not the US should engage in nation-building at all, and if so under what conditions." (Publisher description)
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"In July 2015, Internews launched Open Mic Nepal, a project designed to track and debunk rumors in the earthquake-afected communities. Based on previous pilots of this approach in Gaza and Liberia, the project set out to assess and address information needs by using minimally structured qualitative
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data-gathering approaches to surface trends in community conversations, identify key concerns, misunderstandings and toxic/corrupted information, and to redress them with the provision of reliable and verified information as speedily as possible." (Page 2)
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"This collection offers fresh perspectives on the aesthetics, politics and histories of applied theatre. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book illuminates theatre in a diverse range of global contexts and regions. Divided into three sections - histories and cultural memorie
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s; place, community and environment; and poetics and participation - the chapters interweave cutting-edge theoretical insights with examples of innovative creative practice that traverse different places, spaces and times." (Publisher description)
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"The community radio has made an impression in all grounds of rural society with specific need of sustenance in the long run. The study was taken up to compare the status of three community radios operational each under State Agricultural University (SAU), Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) and Non-Governme
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nt Organization (NGO). Four villages have been selected randomly from one purposively selected block. Forty (40) respondents from four randomly selected villages from each CRS coverage were selected for the study. Thus, a total of 120 respondents constituted the sample of the study. Sustainability of radio station is considered as the combination of social sustainability (social capital and social equity), operational sustainability (suitability of approach and training-cum problem solving) and financial sustainability. The sustainability index of NGO-CRS was found to 0.60 followed by KVK-CRS (0.58) and SAU-CRS (0.57). It is also revealed that financial sustainability of NGO-CRS was found more important than other indicators of for its long term sustenance." (Abstract)
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"This report reflects the findings of a survey performed by Afghan Journalists Safety Committee on the status of female journalists and media workers in Afghanistan. The purpose of the report is to identify the extensive challenges female journalists and media workers face and develop specific measu
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res to tackle those challenges subsequent to development of this report." (Page i)
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"The images used to market development often feature women, as victims of terrible traditions and disempowering situations, or – more commonly these days – as enterprising agents of change, poised to ‘lift’ economies and their families and communities. These images tell a story of victims an
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d heroines, representing development as a project of uplift and rescue. This chapter explores the politics of these representations. It takes as its point of entry a film project that sought to disrupt these narratives, producing a short film called Save us from Saviours. Engaging with those often represented as tragic victims and left out of the story of enterprising entrepreneurs to tell a story about sex work, collective action and social change, the film speaks to a set of larger questions about development intervention. Juxtaposing Save us from Saviours with another film, made at the same time about some of the same people, which gave rise to a third film, made by the sex workers in response, the chapter reflects on the complexities of development communications in an age of global connectivity." (Abstract)
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"This report details how the criminal law is used to limit peaceful expression in India. It documents examples of the ways in which vague or overbroad laws are used to stifle political dissent, harass journalists, restrict activities by nongovernmental organizations, arbitrarily block Internet sites
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or take down content, and target religious minorities and marginalized communities, such as Dalits. The report identifies laws that should be repealed or amended to bring them into line with international law and India’s treaty commitments. These laws have been misused, in many cases in defiance of Supreme Court rulings or advisories clarifying their scope. For example, in 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that speech or action constitutes sedition only if it incites or tends to incite disorder or violence. Yet various state governments continue to charge people with sedition even when that standard is not met. While India’s courts have generally protected freedom of expression, their record is uneven. Some lower courts continue to issue poorly reasoned, speech-limiting decisions, and the Supreme Court, while often a forceful defender of freedom of expression, has at times been inconsistent, leaving lower courts to choose which precedent to emphasize. This lack of consistency has contributed to an inconsistent terrain of free speech rights and left the door open to continued use of the law by local officials and interest groups to harass and intimidate unpopular and dissenting opinions." (Summary, page 2)
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"While answering questions about their professional roles, journalists in Bangladesh preferred being assertive with social issues. An overwhelming majority of the Bangladeshi journalists work to promote tolerance and cultural diversity (87.0%). They also put importance on advocacy for social change
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(79.6%), followed by letting people express their views (78.8%), providing analysis of current affairs (78.4%) and reporting things as they are (76.8%). They also prioritize political assertiveness by assigning importance and extreme importance to supporting national development (76.3%) and monitoring and scrutinizing political leaders (63.2%). Journalists, however, show the least interest in supporting government policies (28.7%). They ranked roles like being an adversary of the government (28.9%) or conveying a positive image of political leadership (37.3%) the lowest. The journalists in general aim to provide the kind of news that attracts the largest audience (75.9%)." (Journalistic roles, page 2)
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"This book is a detailed study of the Indian graphic novel as a significant category of South Asian literature. It focuses on the genre's engagement with history, memory and cultural identity and its critique of the nation in the form of dissident histories and satire. Deploying a nuanced theoretica
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l framework, the volume closely examines major texts such as The Harappa Files, Delhi Calm, Kari, Bhimayana, Gardener in the Wasteland, Pao Anthology, and authors and illustrators including Sarnath Banerjee, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Durgabai Vyam, Amrutha Patil, Srividya Natarajan and others. It also explores - using key illustrations from the texts - critical themes like contested and alternate histories, urban realities, social exclusion, contemporary politics, and identity politics." (Publisher description)
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"The first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world, including Brazil, Chile, China, England, India, Italy, Trinidad and Turkey. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the re
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sults of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences." (Back cover)
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"Now in paperback for the first time, the Handbook is an academic adaptation of information contained in the Global Report on the Status of Women in News Media, a study commissioned by the International Women's Media Foundation. The book's editor was the principal investigator of the original study.
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This text draws together the most robust data from that original study, presenting it in 29 chapters on individual nations and three additional theoretical chapters. The book is the most expansive effort to date to consider women's standing in the journalism profession across the world. Contents organize nations in relation to their progress within newsrooms, with those most advanced in gender equality representing diversity in terms of region and national development. Contributing authors are, in most cases, the original researchers for their respective nations in the Global Report study." (Publisher description)
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"As we stand now, Pakistan’s media continues its stratospheric expansion, but in the midst of curbs and controls and ongoing safety issues. Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka are treading a precarious path to finding credible and independent spaces for the media against economic challenge and political c
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hange – one that has promisingly seen the return of journalist exiles in the case of Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, journalists in the world’s largest democracy in India are standing firm in the face of ongoing direct assaults, wage challenges and threats by governments, security forces and other political and religious powers. And sadly, Afghanistan has found itself in a new war on media as international support withdraws and the Taliban and the IS amplify their efforts at control as evidenced through the horrific suicide attack on Tolo TV workers in Kabul – the single deadliest attack on the country’s media. But perhaps nowhere has the battle for freedom of expression been as acute and brutal in the past year as Bangladesh. As we prepare to launch this report, there have been two more horrendous murders of individuals working to push the boundaries of free expression– blogger Nazimuddin Samad and editor Zulhaz Mannan. They are among seven bloggers and journalists killed in the last year and form part of a broader, sustained project of silencing being ruthlessly conducted by fundamentalists and extremists that have turned the country into a killing field for those who dare to speak with an alternate voice." (Foreword, page 4)
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"The 45 country reports gathered here illustrate the link between the internet and economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). Some of the topics will be familiar to information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) activists: the right to health, education and culture; the socioec
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onomic empowerment of women using the internet; the inclusion of rural and indigenous communities in the information society; and the use of ICT to combat the marginalisation of local languages. Others deal with relatively new areas of exploration, such as using 3D printing technology to preserve cultural heritage, creating participatory community networks to capture an “inventory of things” that enables socioeconomic rights, crowdfunding rights, or the negative impact of algorithms on calculating social benefits. Workers’ rights receive some attention, as does the use of the internet during natural disasters. Ten thematic reports frame the country reports. These deal both with overarching concerns when it comes to ESCRs and the internet – such as institutional frameworks and policy considerations – as well as more specific issues that impact on our rights: the legal justification for online education resources, the plight of migrant domestic workers, the use of digital databases to protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy, digital archiving, and the impact of multilateral trade deals on the international human rights framework. The reports highlight the institutional and country-level possibilities and challenges that civil society faces in using the internet to enable ESCRs. They also suggest that in a number of instances, individuals, groups and communities are using the internet to enact their socioeconomic and cultural rights in the face of disinterest, inaction or censure by the state." (Back cover)
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"This report outlines the international human rights standards and processes related the protection of freedom of expression and religious belief, and discusses regional trends and challenges. The nine country case studies include the stories of many people across the region struggling to defend fre
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edom of expression and promote an understanding of free expression that this is consistent with the expression of religious views. Some of the stories are horrifying – people are being killed for what they believe and say while exercising their rights to express that belief. It also provides an overview of the relevant laws and standards which impinge on people’s rights in each of these countries. It is a challenge to governments in the region to recognise their responsibility to protect the rights of their own citizens. The Jakarta Declaration set out in this report is a stirring declaration of the responsibilities, not just of governments but of all the relevant actors. It set out a clear path to the essential task of protecting rights to free expression in the region and ultimately, to the protection of religious belief itself." (Andrew Puddephatt, page 8)
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"ICTs in Developing Countries is a collection of conceptual and empirical works on the adoption and impacts of ICT use in developing societies. Bringing together a wide range of disciplines and contributors, it offers a rich examination of digital divide and ICT for development both in terms of cont
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extual information and disciplinary perspectives." (Publisher description)
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