"L'Afrique dans son ensemble : 28 chapitres présentant le continent par rapport au reste du monde. Tous les aspects de la géographie physique : relief, hydrographie, climat, végétation, et aussi l'histoire, les religions, les langues. L'Afrique par régions. Les cartes de localisation avec visua
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lisation géopolitique aisée, toponymie française et toponymie des Nations unies, indexation. L'Afrique pays par pays. Par ordre alphabétique les cinquante-quatre Etats du continent et les territoires dépendants (La Réunion, Mayotte, Ceuta et Melilla, etc...) - Nombreuses cartes illustrant : relief, hydrographie, agriculture, pêche et élevage, commerce, industries et ressources du sous-sol." (Description de la maison d'édition)
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"As the manuscript treasures in the libraries of Timbuktu and throughout the northwestern quarter of Africa become known, many questions are raised. How did a manuscript culture flourish in the Sahara and in Muslim Africa more generally? Under what conditions did African intellectuals thrive, and ho
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w did they acquire scholarly works and the writing paper necessary to contribute to knowledge? By exploring the history of the trans-Saharan book and paper trades, the scholarly production and teaching curriculae of African Muslims and the formation, preservation and codicology of library collections, the authors of this original volume provide a variety of answers. The select number of invited contributions represents current research in the material, technological, economic, and cultural dimensions of manuscript production, circulation, and preservation, and the development of specific scholarly and intellectual traditions in Saharan and Sudanic Africa." (Publisher description)
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"The Egyptian revolution was characterized by the instrumental use of social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and text messaging by protesters, to bring about political change and democratic transformation. This article focuses on how these new types of media acted as effective tools fo
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r promoting civic engagement, through supporting the capabilities of the democratic activists by allowing forums for free speech and political networking opportunities; providing a virtual space for assembly; and supporting the capability of the protestors to plan, organize, and execute peaceful protests. Additionally, it explores how these new media avenues enabled an effective form of citizen journalism, through providing forums for ordinary citizens to document the protests; to spread the word about ongoing activities; to provide evidence of governmental brutality; and to disseminate their own words and images to each other, and, most importantly, to the outside world through both regional and transnational media." (Introduction)
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"Relying heavily on scores of first-hand accounts collected through interviews, the studies examine the practice of public diplomacy largely from the perspective of American practitioners in different countries. The analyses follow the standard field officer approach, asking systematically: what iss
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ues in local public opinion should we be addressing; who should we engage; how can we best engage them; and how well are the programs working? This is an ongoing process at every field post, involving local staff and constant attention to contacts. The studies in this book focus on field operations during one period of time, broadly from the end of the Bush administration to the early Obama administration, so comparisons can be made between them to determine which practices are common and which are unique [...] The first chapters in this book offer analyses of public diplomacy operations in specific countries in Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia, and Asia. Four other chapters focus directly on the specific question being asked by practitioners and scholars today: What is the role of the new media in public diplomacy? Two chapters present findings that advance our understanding of the role of the private sector, and the parallel roles of the State Department and the Peace Corps. The final chapter summarizes best practices from recent field experiences." (Preface, page x)
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Souvent considéré comme une activité des plus nuisibles, le piratage des contenus audiovisuels n’en constitue pas moins, depuis des décennies, pour de nombreuses populations aux quatre coins du monde, un moyen majeur d’accéder aux produits des industries culturelles. Nourri d’enquêtes de
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terrain, cet ouvrage explore les enjeux que recèle ce phénomène complexe. Le point de vue adopté est multiple et international. Alors que le piratage est généralement pensé exclusivement à partir de la question du téléchargement sans paiement des droits en Amérique du Nord ou en Europe occidentale, il est ici appréhendé dans toute la variété de ses manifestations, en privilégiant les pays du Sud et de l’Est : des marchands de CDs et DVDs contrefaits de Bogotá ou Alger, jusqu’aux politiques de défense des droits de propriété artistique de Washington ou Séoul, en passant par les pratiques des adeptes moscovites des réseaux peer-to-peer.
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Offers a policy-focused overview of the state of online political participatory media in Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda.
"David Faris looks at the role bloggers played in the campaign to enable Egypt's tiny Baha'i minority to obtain identity cards without identifying themselves as Muslims or Christians. He traces the links between a handful of Baha'i bloggers, a wider circle of sympathetic activist bloggers and some k
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ey people in the mainstream media. He concludes that the sustained online attention which the plight of Baha’is appears to have won in the end made it difficult for the Egyptian government to countenance the continued violation of Baha’i rights." (www.arabmediasociety.com, January 12, 2012)
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"Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people ar
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e developing their political identities—including a transnational Muslim identity—online. In countries where political parties are illegal, the internet is the only infrastructure for democratic discourse. In others, digital technologies such as mobile phones and the internet have given key actors an information infrastructure that is independent of the state. And in countries with large Muslim communities, mobile phones and the internet are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites. This book looks at the role that communications technologies play in advancing democratic transitions in Muslim countries. As such, its central question is whether technology holds the potential to substantially enhance democracy. Certainly, no democratic transition has occurred solely because of the internet. But, as the book argues, no democratic transition can occur today without the internet. According to this book, the major (and perhaps only meaningful) forum for civic debate in most Muslim countries today is online. Activists both within diasporic communities and within authoritarian states—including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan—are the drivers of this debate, which centers around issues such as the interpretation of Islamic texts, gender roles, and security issues. Drawing upon material from interviews with telecommunications policy makers and activists in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tajikistan, and Tanzania and a comparative study of seventy-four countries with large Muslim populations, this book demonstrates that these forums have been the means to organize activist movements that have lead to successful democratic insurgencies." (Publisher description)
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"Internet censorship and surveillance becomes more sophisticated. The first-generation controls like China's "Great Firewall" are being replaced by techniques that include strategically timed distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, targeted malware, take-down notices and stringent terms-of-usa
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ge policies. Their aim is to shape and limit the national information environment. This publication reports on these new trends and their implications for the global internet commons. In addition, it offers 32 detailed country profiles on internet surveillance from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia and Europe." (CAMECO Update 2-2010)
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"Silence lies between forgetting and remembering. This book explores the ways in which different societies have constructed silences to enable men and women to survive and make sense of the catastrophic consequences of armed conflict. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, it examines the silence
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s that have followed violence in twentieth-century Europe, the Middle East and Africa. These essays show that silence is a powerful language of remembrance and commemoration and a cultural practice with its own rules. This broad-ranging book discloses the universality of silence in the ways we think about war through examples ranging from the Spanish Civil War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Armenian Genocide and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Bringing together scholarship on varied practices in different cultures, this book breaks new ground in the vast literature on memory, and opens up new avenues of reflection and research on the lingering aftermath of war." (Publisher description)
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"This book highlights the importance of the news media as watchdogs, agenda setters and gatekeepers for the quality of democratic deliberation in the public sphere. At the same time, it theorizes that the capacity of journalists and media systems to fulfill these roles depends on the broader context
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determined by the profession, the market and the state. Media systems' performance often falls far short of the ideals, as succesive case studies from different world regions demonstrate. Finally, the book asks what policy interventions work effectively to close the gap between the democratic promise and perfomance of the news media as an institution. The final chapter, "Policy recommendations", concludes (page 406): "Interventions include reforms directed at strengthening the journalistic profession, notably institutional capacity building, through bodies such as press councils, press freedom advocacy NGOs, and organizations concerned with journalistic training and accreditation. Other important reforms seek to overcome market failures, including developing a regulatory framework for media systems to ensure pluralism of ownership and diversity of contents. Finally, policies also address the role of the state, including deregulation to shift state-run broadcasting to public service broadcasting, overseen by independent broadcasting regulatory bodies, and the protection of constitutional principles of freedom of the press, speech, and expression." (commbox)
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"Since the mid-1990s, the influence of satellite television broadcasting in the Middle East has become central to the shaping of public attitudes in the region and beyond. While many of the main influential mainstream satellite channels are news-focused, entertainment and religious broadcasting are
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also significant. Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East offers a synopsis of a conference held at Cambridge in January 2010. It focuses on the discourses of a selection of Islamic, Christian and Jewish religious broadcasting channels, as well as the wider factors and structures that sustain them." (Back cover)
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"Copyright laws and policies cover many controversial issues that are linked to different disciplines, in science, culture, technology, economics, law and other fields. The concepts and issues in the field are also approached from different perspectives and with different political and economic agen
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das, sometimes in a misleading context, and often in an imprecise manner. For this reason, policymaking in the area of copyright, particularly in developing countries, has at best been guesswork and at worst uninformed. At the international level, debates and rule-making on copyright, as with other IP, are punctuated with propaganda, anecdotes and dogma. This is what Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and others have called ‘faith-based’ policymaking. Evidence to justify particular policies or laws is rare. Evidence of the real world impact of specific copyright or, for that matter, other IP laws or policies, is almost unheard of. The ACA2K project is unique because the work summarised in this book provides evidence both for policymaking and of the impacts of copyright in the real world. But this book, and the work of the ACA2K project, is not pioneering only because of the illuminating findings in all the eight study countries. It is pioneering also because of the replicable research methodology developed, and the interdisciplinary collaboration in an area that is usually seen as a preserve of lawyers. The project is also of immense importance because of its focus on education and learning materials in Africa, where copyright is always associated with the positive aspects of promoting African music and culture. This research tells us that while copyright laws and policies might have positive effects in one sector, the same is not necessarily universally true. Other project outcomes, such as building networked research capacity on the areas of IP, knowledge governance and development, and the exploratory work on examining the gender aspects of copyright and access, are also ground-breaking." (Foreword)
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