"Die Sowjetdiktatur war von Staatsverbrechen kaum vorstellbaren Ausmaßes geprägt. Insbesondere gilt dies für die Periode von der Oktoberrevolution 1917 bis zum Tod Josef Stalins 1953: Sie umfasst den Bürgerkrieg, die sogenannten Säuberungen, das Gulag-System und zahlreiche weitere Akte massiver
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staatlicher Gewalt und Willkür. Auf welche Weise wurde der Verbrechen in der Sowjetunion und im postsowjetischen Russland gedacht? Der Philologe und Kulturwissenschaftler Nikolai Epplée zeichnet den Umgang mit diesen Staatsverbrechen von 1953 bis 2019 nach. Er legt dar, dass sich in Russland nie eine kritische Erinnerung an die Verbrechen etablieren konnte, welche die Verantwortlichkeiten aufarbeitet und daraus Konsequenzen für die Zukunft zieht. Zwar gründeten sich zahlreiche zivilgesellschaftliche Initiativen, die sich für neue Formen des Gedenkens einsetzten und diese erprobten. In den vergangenen Jahren unter der Herrschaft Wladimir Putins seien diese jedoch zunehmender Repression bis hin zum Verbot ausgesetzt worden. Gleichzeitig erfuhr der Diktator Stalin eine Rehabilitierung in Namen einer heroisch ausgerichteten, für politische Zwecke instrumentalisierten Nationalgeschichtsschreibung. Der Autor zeigt auf, wie in anderen Ländern - in Argentinien, Spanien, Südafrika, Polen, Deutschland und Japan - Staatsverbrechen in der eigenen Vergangenheit aufgearbeitet wurden. Er versucht daraus Schlüsse für einen Umgang mit der verbrecherischen Vergangenheit in Russland zu ziehen, der auch Konsequenzen für die Gegenwart und Zukunft der russischen Gesellschaft hätte." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"In February 2020, the Communist Youth League introduced two virtual idols, Jiangshanjiao and Hongqiman, on Weibo to gain political solidarity during COVID-19. However, the move sparked massive criticism for using an animated female idol while ignoring the needs of female medical workers in the pand
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emic’s epicenter who lacked essential menstrual supplies. One post, “Jiangshanjiao, do you get your period?” went viral and was retweeted more than 100,000 times in several hours before being censored. The pushback eventually led to the league deleting its original announcement. Based on 1,106 posts and 10 interviews, this study explores the emotions expressed through Jiangshanjiao and how they inform feminist online engagement in China. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s framework on emotions, the findings show that emotions expressed through Jiangshanjiao predominately circle around disgust and fear, which confront state propaganda, acknowledge the pervasiveness of sexual violence, and foster solidarity. Chinese feminism has been caught in the middle of misogyny and the strict control of activism. Reviewing Jiangshanjiao provides insights into how resistance has played out in the complicated gender politics in China." (Abstract)
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"This paper examines the counter-violent extremism and anti-terrorism measures in Australia, China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States by investigating how governments leveraged internet intermediaries as their surrogate censors. Particular attention is paid to how political rhetoric l
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ed to legislation passed or proposed in each of the countries studied, and their respective restrictive measures are compared against the recommendations specified by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. A typology for international comparison is proposed, which provides further insights into a country’s policy focus." (Abstract)
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"Using the extended parallel process model (PPM), this research examines whether and how humor functions to influence women’s breast self-examination (BSE) intention. We conducted a 2 (humor: present vs. absent) × 2 (threat: high vs. low) × 2 (efficacy: high vs. low) between-subjects experiment
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in which we measured individual differences in BSE intention. The sample includes 480 Chinese women aged 20–50 years old. Results suggest that the 2-way interaction effect between threat and efficacy was significant, indicating that women who received messages containing high threat and high efficacy had the highest intention of BSE. In addition, the 3-way interaction effect between threat, efficacy, and humor was significant. The results indicate that if women perceive the threat of getting breast cancer as mild and believe that they are incapable of preventing it, messages with humor can significantly enhance their intention to engage in BSE when compared with messages without humor. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed." (Abstract)
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"The study seeks to understand consumers’ and decisionmakers’ perspectives on how current entertainment media treats themes of faith, religion and spirituality in its narratives and characters, if there is a market for more accurate and diverse representation of faith, and what opportunities exi
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st for improving these portrayals. HarrisX surveyed nearly 10,000 entertainment consumers across 11 countries as well as 30 in-depth interviews with entertainment industry leaders. Consumers say they learn about other religions through entertainment and see the potential for faith-inclusive content to create understanding and dialogue in society. Yet, respondents share that when they see their religion or faith - and others - included in mainstream entertainment, they feel it’s often sensationalized or that the portrayal leans on stereotypes. Similarly, entertainment industry professionals also highlighted an opportunity to reach and connect with an underserved audience. They noted that producing this content not only represents a good business opportunity, but also provides the opportunity to demystify what consumers know about other faiths and create understanding between people of different belief systems." (Introduction)
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"In recent years, the economic exchanges between China and Latin American countries have been further deepened, and news about Chinese foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the region responds to economic reality and the different stages of changing international relations and media characteristics.
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The current study includes a content analysis by human coders of 308 news articles on Chinese FDIs in three types of Peruvian news outlets from 2001 to 2020, namely the Left-leaning newspaper (La República), the Right-leaning newspaper (El Comercio), and specialized economic news outlets (Gestión Online and Semana Económica). In this context, it explores how international economic news volume is related to real-world economic indexes and how news interpretations of Chinese FDIs, as manifested by news frames, are influenced by contextual and political factors." (Abstract)
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"This study explores parental views of early adolescents’ media use and parental mediation among urban middle-class families in mainland China through a sociocultural perspective. By interviewing 18 Chinese parents, this research found that parents’ concerns with media, such as children’s eyes
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ight, Internet addiction, and learning outcomes, align with the public discourse, shaped by the parenting philosophy and sociocultural priorities in contemporary Chinese families. Chinese parents tend to develop mediation strategies related to these concerns and refer to restrictive mediation in the context of Chinese guan parenting, a combination of control/demand and warmth/sacrifice, which provides a more nuanced perspective on restrictive mediation in terms of its actual practices. The research adds to the theory of parental mediation and highlights the need to study culturally specific parental perspectives and mediation to understand children’s media experiences. Further implications are discussed." (Abstract)
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"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are
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showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators.
• Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.
• When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation.
• Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected.
• Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws.
• Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10)
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"In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, acr
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oss all countries, in the last year.
• News use across online platforms is fragmenting, with six networks now reaching at least 10% of our respondents, compared with just two a decade ago. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time.
• Linked to these shifts, video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially with younger groups. Short news videos are accessed by two-thirds (66%) of our sample each week, with longer formats attracting around half (51%). The main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%), increasing the challenges around monetisation and connection.
• Although the platform mix is shifting, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news – that’s down 10 percentage points on 2018. Publishers in a few Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are showing a weaker connection with news brands than they did in the past.
• Turning to the sources that people pay most attention to when it comes to news on various platforms, we find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks such as Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role.
• Concern about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news has risen by 3 percentage points in the last year with around six in ten (59%) saying they are concerned. The figure is considerably higher in South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%), both countries that have been holding elections this year.
• Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content in online platforms is highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks. Both platforms have hosted misinformation or conspiracies around stories such as the war in Gaza, and the Princess of Wales’s health, as well as so-called ‘deep fake’ pictures and videos." (Executive summary, page 10)
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"Comprising 41 chapters by a team of international contributors, the companion is divided into three parts: histories; approaches; thematic considerations. The chapters offer wide-ranging explorations of how forms of mediation influence communication, social relationships, cultural practices, partic
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ipation, and social change, as well as production and access to information and knowledge. This volume considers new developments, and highlights the ways in which anthropology can contribute to the study of the human condition and the social processes in which media are entangled." (Publisher description)
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"Mit parteistaatlicher Unterstützung avancierten die großen IT-Unternehmen Chinas seit Ende der 1990er Jahre schnell zu den Motoren der am dynamischsten wachsenden Digitalwirtschaft der Welt. Sie adaptierten zunächst Produkte und Geschäftsmodelle aus dem Ausland, gingen danach aber eigene Wege.
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Millionen von Chinesinnen und Chinesen entdeckten auf Diskussionsplattformen, in Spielen oder durch Blogs neue Möglichkeiten der Identitätsgestaltung und erlernten neue Formen des Austauschs. Diese Technik-Begeisterung überlagerte lange die mahnenden Stimmen, die auf die destruktiven Folgen der Digitalisierung und des flächendeckenden staatlichen Datenmissbrauchs hinwiesen. Rund um die Olympischen Sommerspiele 2008 in Beijing begann die Staats- und Parteiführung, den internationalen Informationsfluss einzuschränken, indem etwa Twitter und Facebook in China offiziell geblockt wurden, und investierte systematisch in eigene digitale Technologien. Diese Entwicklung hat unter Xi Jinping und durch den neuen «Kalten Krieg» mit den USA noch einmal Fahrt aufgenommen. Wer sind heute die zentralen Akteure auf Chinas digitalem Weg in die Zukunft? Wie abhängig sind sie von Staat und Partei? Und welche Potenziale bergen die neuen Technologien für den Wunsch nach interner Öffnung und Demokratisierung?" (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"By the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus had fully entered our everyday vocabulary and our lives, religious communities and places of worship around the world were already undergoing profound changes. In Asian and Asian diaspora communities, diverse cultural tropes, beliefs, and artifacts were m
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obilized to make sense of Covid, including a repertoire of gods and demons like Coronasur, the virus depicted with the horns and fangs of a traditional Hindu demon. Various kinds of knowledge were invoked: theologies, indigenous medicines, and biomedical narratives, as well as ethical values and nationalist sentiments. CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age follows the documentation and analysis of the abrupt societal shifts triggered by the pandemic to understand current and future pandemic times, while revealing further avenues for research on religion that have opened up in the Covidian age. Developed in tandem with the research blog CoronAsur: Religion and COVID-19, this volume is a “phygital” publication, a work grounded in empirical roots as well as digitally born communication. It comprises thirty-eight essays that examine Asian religious communities—Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Christian as well as popular/folk and new religious movements, or NRMs—in terms of the changes brought on by and the ritual responses to the Covid pandemic." (Publisher description)
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"This study examines the authoritarian conditioning of political expression on social media in three Chinese societiesby analyzing three parallel surveys comprising 6942 respondents from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Results demonstrate that the use of social media to gather political infor
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mation triggers politically expressive use of social media and indirectly predicts offline non-institutionalized political participation. Individuals’ authoritarian orientation, however, moderates such indirect effects. Only people who demonstrate low or moderate adherence to authoritarian value systems exemplify this mediation model. Those with high levels of authoritarian orientation are not exemplary. Furthermore, the extent to which social media use interacts with authoritarian orientation to build a relationship with political participation presents two different patterns across three Chinese societies. The moderated mediating effect described here exists in Hong Kong and Taiwan but not in mainland China. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings." (Abstract)
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"The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance explores the concepts, methodologies, and implications of collective intelligence for democratic governance, in the first comprehensive survey of this field. Illustrated by a collection of inspiring case studies and edit
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ed by three pioneers in collective intelligence, this handbook serves as a unique primer on the science of collective intelligence applied to public challenges and will inspire public actors, academics, students, and activists across the world to apply collective intelligence in policymaking and administration to explore its potential, both to foster policy innovations and reinvent democracy." (Publisher description)
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"Bringing together 15 journalism scholars from around the world, this book explores and offers solutions to the common issues and inadequacies of reporting on sexual violence in the media. Presenting a range of conceptual, methodological, and empirical chapters, the book tackles issues related to, o
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r missing, from journalism in three parts: Part I acknowledges and surveys the role journalism plays in shining a light on social injustices and critiques research deficits in reporting on sexual violence; Part II employs cutting-edge research linked to an intersectional lens to amplify the voices that have been silenced in the media coverage; Part III explores how advocacy, campaign, and solutions journalism offers frameworks for ethical reporting on the shadow epidemic of sexual violence during these COVID-normal times." (Publisher description)
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"The book identifies and explains the unequal power relations in place that limit the possibilities of communication justice, the challenges and difficulties faced by activists and communities, the ways in which communities and movements have confronted power structures through discourse and materia
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l action, and their successes and limitations in creating new structures that promote the right to, and facilitate a future for, communicative justice. The volume features contributions based on experiences of resistance and transformation in the Global South—Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Malawi, and collaborations between the continents of Latin America and Africa—as well as notable studies from the Global North—Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom—that defy hegemonic models." (Publisher description)
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"This edited collection illuminates the scope with which identities and intimacies interact on a wide range of social media platforms. A varied range of international scholars examine the contexts of very different social media spaces, with topics ranging from whitewashing and memes, parental discou
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rses in online activities, Spotify as an intimate social media platform, neoliberalisation of feminist discourses, digital sex work, social media wars in trans debates and 'BimboTok'. The focus is on their acceleration and impact due to the specificities of social media in relation to identities, intimacies within the broad 'political' sphere. The geographic range of case study material reflects the global impact of social media, and includes data from Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the USA." (Publisher description)
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"The two essays in this report highlight ways in which two global authoritarian powers, Russia and China, provide surge capacity to kleptocratic networks in Africa. In his essay J.R. Mailey dissects the Wagner Group’s illicit activities in key parts of Africa. The Wagner Group’s activities are c
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omplex, but Mailey zeroes in on the fact that the military support offered to African kleptocrats has little to do with providing security and stability for the African people. Rather it is focused on extracting resources, advancing geopolitical goals, and serving as a brutal cog in the authoritarian mutual support machinery. Even if the ultimate fate of the Wagner Group remains unclear, these trends are unlikely to abate. The opaque economic relationships that the Wagner Group has developed on the continent no doubt are too lucrative for the Kremlin to surrender [...] Andrea Ngombet Malewa’s essay highlights the ways in which Beijing facilitates Congo-Brazzaville’s deeply kleptocratic regime. In addition to long-standing Chinese involvement in the timber and extractive industries, Ngombet’s analysis spotlights the establishment of a Sino-Congolese Bank for Africa that could allow kleptocrats to bypass the transparency requirements of Western-linked banks, thereby affording opportunities to launder money with impunity. This development has significant implications for accountability norms worldwide." (Executive summary)
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"This study offers a systematic theory of the institutional solutions to the dictator’s dilemma, which arises from the incapacity to calibrate repression and concessions due to the lack of information about elite and popular discontent. Empirically, the book presents a detailed discussion of the t
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ypes of information-gathering institutions created in autocracies, paying particular attention to the difference between standard mechanisms for the retrospective assessment of overt dissatisfaction and the more sophisticated channels for anticipatory evaluations of latent discontent. The book argues that the creation of institutions for the involuntary collection of information is straightforward, but that only certain regimes successfully promote the voluntary provision of information, which is essential for anticipatory governance. In ethnically heterogeneous countries, compactly settled ethnic minorities present a further obstacle for establishing a panoptical authoritarian vision. These problems notwithstanding, communist regimes are especially adept at developing sophisticated systems that mobilize the party, State Security, and internal journalism to assess levels of discontent. Methodologically, the book demonstrates that documents prepared for regime insiders are more likely to shed light on a secret activity like information collection than officially released materials. Theoretically, the book argues that although the dictator’s dilemma can be solved and abundant information does extend authoritarian lifespans, information cannot ensure the indefinite survival of dictatorships. The book is based on detailed analysis of the origins and evolution of information-gathering systems in communist Bulgaria (1944–1991) and in China (1949–present), supplemented by eight case studies of information collection in the complete range of authoritarian regimes." (Publisher description)
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