"This report presents the author's experiences regarding the relation of international interventions and local institutions in the (post-)conflict countries of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan. Haselock states that media reforms are most successful where they are the result of partnership
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s with local stakeholders, or where local professionals and the civil society have taken ownership of the peacebuilding process. This approach involves international planners having a high understanding of the social and cultural situation and the conditions of the conflict. Therefore, they need to be part of two-way communication, where they are regarded as learners, following a "you know best", instead of a "we know best" approach. However, Haselock shows that foreign implementers often do not include local stakeholders enough, evoking refusal of international peacebuilding interventions." (commbox)
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"The capacity of the minority-language (including Serbian-language) broadcast media to inform minority communities in Kosovo about local news is limited. There are several Serbian language TV stations but none of them broadcasts throughout the entire territory of Kosovo. As a consequence, many Kosov
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o Serbs turn to media broadcasted from Serbia. The Kosovo Serb Community as well as other minority communities have repeatedly expressed an interest in their own Kosovo-wide TV station. According to an IREX research, 72% of the Kosovo Serb community would surely or probably watch a Serbian-language TV station covering the whole territory of Kosovo. Access to information and media is a human right as laid down in Art. 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, the Constitution of Kosovo explicitly mentions the right of the Kosovo Serb Community to a Kosovo-wide Serbian-language TV channel. There a several different options to address this need – such as a second channel within the RTK umbrella, a public channel outside of RTK’s umbrella, or a commercial Serbian language television station – but there is currently no broad consensus yet among key stakeholders on which option to further pursue. The overall objective of the 12 month Preparatory Assistance project (2009) is to explore all these questions and to lay the groundwork for a Kosovo-wide Serbian/minority language TV channel." (Executive summary)
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"Medieninterventionen militärischer Organisationen werden fast ausschließlich bemerkt, wenn es sich um restriktive Informationspolitik oder Zerstörung von Radio- und Fernsehsendern handelt. Dabei ist die kommunikative Tätigkeit von militärischen Organisationen weitaus breiter angelegt: Sie umfa
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sst neben klassischer Presse- und Informationsarbeit und offener und verdeckter Propaganda sowohl die Verhinderung von Kommunikation als auch schützende und unterstützende Maßnahmen für die örtliche Medienlandschaft. Dieser letzte Ansatz medialer Interventionspolitik militärischer Organisationen betrifft in erster Linie die materielle Unterstützung von lokalen Medien, teilweise aber auch ihre indirekte finanzielle Förderung und Ausbildung. Bislang galt die finanzielle, materielle oder beratende Unterstützung von Medieninstitutionen im Ausland, die Ausbildung von Journalisten oder die Beeinflussung des gesellschaftlichen, technischen, rechtlichen und politischen Umfeldes unter dem Begriff „Medienhilfe“ als eine von zivilen Organisationen durchgeführte Tätigkeit, deren wissenschaftliche Erschließung allerdings noch in den Anfängen steckt.1 Doch auch wenn das Tätigkeitsspektrum militärischer Organisationen nicht so weitreichend ist wie bei einigen zivilen Organisationen, besitzen militärische Organisationen bei Auslandseinsätzen in der Regel nicht nur aufgrund ihrer technischen Möglichkeiten und Bedürfnisse – etwa bei der Zuteilung von Funkfrequenzen – einen erheblichen Einfluss auf die Mediensituation vor Ort. Nicht selten kommt es daher im Mediensektor zu Spannungen zwischen zivilen und militärischen Instanzen, die Kompetenz- und Zuständigkeitsbereiche, strategische Entscheidungen und konkrete Maßnahmen betreffen." (Seite 111)
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"In der Debatte um die politische Wirkung von Medien wird häufig übersehen, dass internationale Akteure schon längst auf ausländische Kommunikationsräume Einfluss nehmen. Thema dieser Arbeit ist das Instrument der externen Medienhilfe, bei der mit finanzieller, materieller und beratender Unters
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tützung, aber auch durch verhindernde Maßnahmen ganze Mediensysteme beeinflusst werden. Die Fragestellung betrifft die handlungsleitenden Motive, die jeweiligen Ziele der Akteure und ihre Konzepte und Implementierungsstrategien, die theoretisch und praktisch am Beispiel wichtigsten Medienhilfe-Implementierer in den Nachkriegsregionen Bosnien-Herzegowina und Kosovo von 1995 bis 2006 nachgezeichnet werden." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Oral history is inherently about memory, and when oral history interviews are used "in public," they invariably both reflect and shape public memories of the past. Oral History and Public Memories is the only book that explores this relationship, in fourteen case studies of oral history's use in a
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variety of venues and media around the world. Readers will learn, for example, of oral history based efforts to reclaim community memory in post-apartheid Cape Town, South Africa; of the role of personal testimony in changing public understanding of Japanese American history in the American West; of oral history's value in mapping heritage sites important to Australia's Aboriginal population; and of the way an oral history project with homeless people in Cleveland, Ohio became a tool for popular education. Taken together, these original essays link the well established practice of oral history to the burgeoning field of memory studies." (Publisher description)
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"There is very little undestanding of the role that communicartion processes play in the numerous starnds of post-conflict reconstruction, including peacebuilding, governance, and long-term development. This paper addressess this gap by distilling lessons learned from the media and communication str
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ategies of different donors. It takes as its primary case study the Office of Transition Initiatives at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has long track record of media and communication work in post-conflict environments. In doing so, it seeks to present a new model for understanding and working with communication in post-conflict and fragile environments." (Foreword)
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"This evaluation of USAID’s Kosovo Media Assistance Project (KMAP) took place close to the end of the three-year project, and addressed two main issues: (1) what has been the impact of KMAP? and (2) based on findings related to KMAP, what recommendations can be made to guide possible future USAID
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media programming in Kosovo? The Scope of Work (SOW) poses 19 questions and directs that the body of the evaluation should answer these questions. Therefore, we address each question below." (Page 1)
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"From 1995 to 2005, the international community provided significant support to media in the Western Balkans. Based on a meta-analysis of 37 project reports and interviews with a broad range of media experts, this study finds that direct support to independent media was a key factor in helping the c
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itizens of several Balkan countries to rid themselves of authoritarian regimes. At the same time, the publication states that often journalism training - the greatest share of media support - has had few lasting effects. Support for legislative and regulatory reform has been efficient and effective, but the new media legislation has not been sufficiently well implemented. The overall conclusion (page 36): 'Media assistance in the Balkans proved itself an effective way to promote democracy by removing barriers to the enjoyment of fundamental rights to information and expression as protected by international law, and without intervening in political choices themselves. When media support was perceived as being primarily driven by political objectives, it was in danger of being like the problem it sought to alleviate and obscuring the concept of independent media." (CAMECO Update 1-2008)
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