"In this report, we use survey data collected in late March and early April 2020 to document and understand how people in six countries (Argentina, Germany, South Korea, Spain, the UK, and the US) accessed news and information about COVID-19 in the early stages of the global pandemic, how they rate
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the trustworthiness of the different sources and platforms they rely on, how much misinformation they say they encounter, and their knowledge of and responses to the coronavirus crisis. We show that news use is up across all six countries, and most people in most countries are using either social media, search engines, video sites, and messaging applications (or combinations of these) to get news and information about coronavirus. In all six countries, people with low levels of formal education are much less likely to say that they rely on news organisations for news and information about coronavirus, and more likely to rely on social media and messaging applications. In Argentina, South Korea, Spain, and the US, young people are much more likely to rely on social media, and in Germany, the UK, and the US, to rely on messaging applications groups." (Executive summary)
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"The Chinese government’s media activities in the Pacific fall into five categories. First, China has expanded its official media to Pacific Island countries (PICs). The China Central Television’s English international channel (CCTV-9) has established operations in the Federated States of Micron
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esia (FSM, 2002), Samoa (2005), Vanuatu (2005), Fiji (2006) and Tonga (2006). China Radio International is also broadcasting to audiences in Vanuatu (2007), Samoa (2010) and Tonga (2012). In September 2010, China’s biggest news agency Xinhua opened its first Pacific branch in Fiji’s capital, Suva. In addition, Chinese embassies in the Pacific have opened Facebook and Twitter accounts for publicity purposes. Second, Chinese diplomatic missions actively use local media for publicity [...] China’s three other types of media activities include sponsoring Pacific journalists’ visits to China for training or exchanges, constructing media facilities and fostering ties with local Chinese media in PICs. For example, Pacific journalists attended capacity training programs in China in August 2015, October 2016 and June 2018. In March 2019, China funded the construction of the press gallery in Fiji’s parliament. Chinese embassies have also made efforts to establish close relations with Fiji Daily, the country’s largest newspaper in Mandarin Chinese, and Vila Times, the first Chinese-English bilingual newspaper in Vanuatu. In March 2018, Chinese ambassador to Fiji Qian Bo encouraged Fiji Daily to play its role in ‘telling the China story well’ in Fiji and contribute to China–Fiji relations." (Pages 1-2)
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"This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did
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it all begin? How has development varied from one country to another? What motivated governments, institutions and people to see science communication as an answer to questions of the social place of science? Communicating Science describes the pathways followed by 39 different countries. All continents and many cultures are represented. For some countries, this is the first time that their science communication story has been told." (Publisher description)
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"China’s Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) operates in Xinjiang by collecting Big Data and alerting authorities to those it deems potentially harmful to the CCP regime. It does so through two major devices: the mobile phone, and the camera. These act as tools of disablement constraining
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Uighur mobility and settlement. Uighurs are now obligated to carry smartphones, on which police mandate “nanny apps” to monitor Uighurs through their devices. The Jingwang (“cleansing the web”) app not only tracks Uighurs’ movement, but also records and extracts all messages, internet use, contacts, photographs, and files. These are then amalgamated by IJOP which uses keyword searches to compare the data to its list of potential crimes, which include prayer, visiting banned websites, and other petty accusations. IJOP then decides who is considered a threat and will thus be arrested, and who will simply continue to be monitored." (Page 6)
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"In this book, we have investigated the evolving intergenerational media practices over three years to reflect on the quotidian (and often invisible) forms of care at a distance enacted as part of contemporary Digital Kinship. As we have explored, within different cultural contexts we are seeing div
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erging forms of intergenerational perceptions and practices around media and care. Over the three years, we witnessed the growth of self-tracking health apps which are being taken up in diverse intergenerational ways. As we note, understanding intergenerational care at a distance is about complicating care beyond medical notions of health and social services." (Conclusion, page 187)
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"The authors engage with a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives in order to explore the actions of a vigilant digital audience — denunciation, shaming, doxing — and to consider the role of the press and other public figures in supporting or contesting these activities. In turn, the volume il
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luminates several tensions underlying these justice seeking activities — from their capacity to reproduce categorical forms of discrimination, to the diverse motivations of the wider audiences who participate in vigilant denunciations. This timely volume presents thoughtful case studies drawn both from high-profile Anglo-American contexts, and from developments in regions that have received less coverage in English-language scholarship [China, Morocco, Russia and Slovenia]. It is distinctive in its focus on the contested boundary between policing and entertainment, and on the various contexts in which the desire to seek retribution converges with the desire to consume entertainment." (Back cover)
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"The world is facing an unprecedented climate and environmental emergency. Scientists have identified human activity as primarily responsible for the climate crisis, which together with rampant environmental pollution, and the unbridled activities of the extractive and agricultural industries, pose
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a direct threat to the sustainability of life on this planet. This edition of Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) seeks to understand the constructive role that technology can play in confronting the crises. It disrupts the normative understanding of technology being an easy panacea to the planet’s environmental challenges and suggests that a nuanced and contextual use of technology is necessary for real sustainability to be achieved. A series of thematic reports frame different aspects of the relationship between digital technology and environmental sustainability from a human rights and social justice perspective, while 46 country and regional reports explore the diverse frontiers where technology meets the needs of both the environment and communities and where technology itself becomes a challenge to a sustainable future." (Back cover)
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"Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audience provides previously absent analyses of Korean TV dramas' transnational influences, peculiar production features, distribution, and consumption to enrich the contextual understanding of Korean TV's transcultural mobility. Ev
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en as academic discussions about the Korean Wave have heated up, Korean television studies from transnational viewpoints often lack in-depth analysis and overlook the recently extended flow of Korean television beyond Asia. This book illustrates the ecology of Korean television along with the Korean Wave for the past two decades in order to showcase Korean TV dramas' international mobility and its constant expansion with the different Western television and their audiences. Korean TV dramas' mobility in crossing borders has been seen in both transnational and transcultural flows, and the book opens up the potential to observe the constant flow of Korean television content in new places, peoples, manners, and platforms around the world." (Publisher description)
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"Justice4Her is a cross-sector, multi-stakeholder project of RNW Media and Qianqian Law Firm that seeks to strengthen the rule of law and reduce gender-based violence (GBV) towards women migrant workers in China. The project launched in 2016 and targets women migrant workers in Beijing, Shanghai and
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Guangdong Province and was scaled further with co-funding from the European Commission in 2018. Justice4Her provides legal support through a digital interactive platform and disseminates information on GBV to millions through online channels (social media platforms, blogs, email, WeChat groups) and integrates this online work with offline activities. The project has increased mainstream media coverage in China of how GBV affects young women migrants and carried out viral online campaigns to raise public awareness and to challenge tolerance and acceptance of GBV. While advocating for the improvement of anti-domestic violence laws in China, Justice4Her provides pro bono legal aid to victims of GBV in partnership with Beijing Qianqian law firm, a local law firm, both in the form of consultations via mail and support in bringing their cases to court and representing them. The project has also trained pro bono lawyers to better represent victims, media professionals to encourage more gender sensitive reporting on cases of GBV and NGOs on how conduct successful anti-GBV media campaigns and effectively counter negative stereotypes and shift public discourse from a victim blaming narrative to a survivor narrative." (Introduction)
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"La tiranía del rating se ha convertido en los últimos años en una expresión muy utilizada por diferentes actores de la industria de los medios de comunicación, que desconfían de la forma en la que las métricas miden el comportamiento de las audiencias. Los compradores, los periodistas, los a
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ctores y los productores ven cada vez más en estas mediciones una moneda de cambio que privilegia la cantidad sobre la calidad. Sin embargo, la investigación comercial de audiencias, y la manera en la que es implementada, ajustada, cuestionada, tolerada o acatada por las industrias mediáticas y publicitarias contemporáneas, es un tema que no ha sido estudiado con suficiente atención. Conscientes de la relevancia y de la urgencia de estos temas, los autores de Contando colombianos cuestionan el funcionamiento de las distintas métricas comerciales; analizan los referentes históricos y conceptuales que motivaron el diseño de estos sistemas de clasificación; indagan acerca de sus consecuencias biopolíticas, filosóficas, sociales y culturales; y plantean modos y soluciones que permitan humanizar y relativizar la influencia, el impacto y el poder de las métricas comerciales. A través del estudio de un amplio rango de medios de comunicación, como el cine, la radio, el internet, la publicidad, la prensa y la televisión, y mediante estudios que abarcan toda América Latina y que se extienden a países como los Estados Unidos, España y China, este libro demuestra que la medición de audiencias no se limita a aspectos económicos y comerciales, sino que incide y define los modos en lo que el ser humano es pensado, gobernado, entendido, estudiado y, en última instancia, valorado y contado." (Sinopsis)
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"There are still opposing and restraining forces to globalization processes taking place in media, and the global mediascape comprises international, regional and local markets, and global and local players, which in recent years have evolved at an uneven pace. By analyzing similarities and differen
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ces in a landscape where driving forces of globalization meet locally situated audiences and institutions, this volume unveils a complex, contested space comprising global and local players, whose success is determined by both their national and international dimensions. It guides its readers to the geographical and intellectual exploration of the international media landscape, analyzing the global and local media players and their modus operandi." (Publisher description)
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"Utilising results of an unprecedented global study, this volume explores the ways in which young adults in seven different countries engage with digital and social media in religiously significant ways. Presenting and analysing the findings of the international research project Young Adults and Rel
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igion in a Global Perspective (YARG), an international panel of contributors shed new light on the impact of digital media and its associated technologies on young people's religiosities, worldviews, and values. Case studies from China, Finland, Ghana, Israel, Peru, Poland, and Turkey are used to demonstrate how these developments are progressing, not just in the West, but across the world." (Publisher description)
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"The issue of ‘China colonizing Africa’ received significant attention in both traditional and social media in the periods before, during and after the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) 2018 meeting. This study traces these discourses on YouTube [...] The study finds that the themes and
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the sentiments reflect the dominance of pessimistic and optimistic perspectives on the Africa–China relationship. Furthermore, the study shows that the themes discussed have not offered new perspectives but instead the discussions have repackaged old narratives as part of agenda building efforts by the protagonists. The study, therefore argues that social media have become important platforms for activation of issues on the Africa–China relationship, hence the persistence of these old narratives is attributed to lack of effective responses to issues on social media by both African countries and Chinese officials." (Abstract)
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"This edited volume gives voice to pluralised avenues from visual communication and cultural studies regarding the Global South and beyond, including examples from China, India, Cambodia, Brazil, Mexico and numerous other countries. Defining visual communication and culture as an umbrella term that
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encompasses imagery studies, the moving image and non-verbal visual communication, the first three chapters of the book describe de-Westernisation discourse as a way to strengthen emic research and the Global South as both a geographical concept and, even more so, a category of diversity and pluralism. The subsequent regional case study-based chapters draw on various emic theories and methodologies and find a complex arrangement of visuality between sociocultural and sociopolitical practices and institutions." (Publisher description)
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"This report analyses a persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors on Twitter and Facebook. This activity largely targeted Chinese-speaking audiences outside of the Chinese mainland (where Twitter is blocked) with the intention of influencing perceptions on key issues,
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including the Hong Kong protests, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and, to a lesser extent Covid-19 and Taiwan. Extrapolating from the takedown dataset, to which we had advanced access, given to us by Twitter, we have identified that this operation continues and has pivoted to try to weaponise the US Government’s response to current domestic protests and create the perception of a moral equivalence with the suppression of protests in Hong Kong." (https://www.aspi.org.au)
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"The digital divide in rural areas is an important social issue, especially in developing countries. Although Internet and broadband penetration have increased in the world generally, there are many obstacles for rural China to get access to ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and its ser
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vices. The mobile platform is regarded as a novel and effective tool to reduce the digital divide. Based on a case of one mobile platform, namely WeCountry in Chinese rural areas, this study illustrates how a mobile platform bridges the digital divide and helps rural areas achieve social inclusion. Results show that: (1) the mobile platform mainly acts on the digital capability divide elimination, and it has to guide and increase users’ usage capability; (2) the mobile platform can empower villagers in structural, psychological, and resource dimensions, achieving political inclusion, social participation inclusion, and economic inclusion; (3) platform providers and government are key organizations during the divide elimination process. This paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications." (Abstract)
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"The challenge in evaluating China’s foreign aid has always been the unavailability of reliable data sets. This study constitutes the first analysis of the AidData data set from a communication network perspective. It examines China’s development aid to Africa in the ICT sector from 2000 to 2014
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. Combining data mapping, network modeling, and regression, it uncovers general trends of aid allocation, central players, and collaboration patterns among aid agencies. The results demonstrate the variability in the distribution of China’s foreign assistance to 44 African countries. In particular, African countries with less population, worse economic development, but higher oil rents are more likely to receive ICT aid from China. This study also finds that aid implementation is less likely to occur through collaboration within the same sector or between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private companies. This research reveals nuanced geometries of aid with “Chinese characteristics” that move beyond the extractive “Angola model” or the mutual benefits model. These findings provide implications on how Chinese telecommunication companies are shaping Africa’s digital future." (Abstract)
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