"The report documents the threats to civil society in the digital age by examining the legislative and regulatory framework in four countries in Africa: Egypt, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia. These countries were selected from the four main geographic regions of Africa, in order to provide a sense
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of the state of civic engagement in the digital age across the continent. The case studies are clearly not representative of what is happening on the continent, but are illustrative of some prominent trends. The recommendations emanating from the research call for the states to revise and repeal identified restrictive laws and align them with international standards. Civil society organisations and human rights activists are also encouraged to enhance their individual and organizational digital knowledge and expertise to more robust counter disruptive state measures. This expertise should be enhanced through a human rights lens and should extend to other stakeholders including judicial officers, legislators, law enforcement and the general public through sustained multi-stakeholder engagement." (Executive summary, pages 7-8)
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"Social media platforms have become powerful tools to amplify and share narratives. Like many evolving technologies, platforms such as Twitter or Facebook may be used for social good or for ill. Digital vigilantism (whereby social media platforms are used for organised shaming, hounding or doxing of
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a target deemed by the online community to have transgressed norms) may have real-world consequences. In extreme cases this may result in acts of ‘terrorism’ or other forms of unlawful killing. Yet while digital vigilantism may appropriate traditional law enforcement mechanisms, in some cases it may also try to hold law enforcement to account. Key points: Digital vigilantism, including using video material, is found in Kenya and South Africa, with doxing and hounding observed in conversations about foreigners in South Africa and police brutality in Kenya; in Kenya, digital vigilantism seeks to hold traditional law enforcement mechanisms to account through acts of shaming, usually without usurping their powers; in South Africa, digital vigilantism did at times seems to seek to usurp traditional law enforcement; in both countries, engagement and promotion of new ideas was minimal; key influencers leverage existing networks to amplify their messages, including by using video material – some of it fake – to extend their reach." (Summary)
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"This publication is the outcome of the “East Africa Regional Peace Journalism Training Workshop” for journalists covering conflict and peacebuilding in East Africa. Organized by Rongo University’s Center for Media, Democracy, Peace, and Security (CMDPS) in partnership with the African Peacebu
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ilding Network (APN) of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the two-day event brought together journalists from five East African countries—Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda—to develop their capacity for reporting on conflict-related issues in an objective manner based on the tenets of the theory and practice of peace journalism." (Introduction)
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"An increasing number of media platforms - from newspapers and television to Internet social media networks - are the major providers of indispensable information about the natural world and environmental risk. Despite the dramatic changes in the news industry that have tended to reduce the number o
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f full-time newspaper reporters, environmental journalists remain key to bringing stories to light across the globe. With contributions from across the world broken down into five key regions - the United States of America, Europe and Russia, Asia and Australia, Africa and the Middle East, and South America - this book provides support for today's environment reporters, the providers of essential news in the 21st century." (Publisher description)
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"Most adult Namibians own mobile phones (88%) and radios (67%). Four in 10 (40%) own television sets, and one in four (25%) own computers. Daily Internet use has multiplied over the past decade, increasing from 5% in 2008 to 28% in 2019. But more than four in 10 Namibians (44%) still “never” use
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the Internet. The most common source of daily news for Namibians is the radio (62%), followed by TV (40%), the Internet (27%), social media (27%), and newspapers (23%). Among the three-fourths (76%) of adult Namibians who have heard of social media, half (51%) see its effects on society as positive, while one-fourth (24%) see them as negative. Social media users are most frequently blamed as sources of false (fake) news (by 67% of respondents), followed by journalists (62%) and politicians (60%). Eight out of 10 Namibians regard the country’s news media as “completely free” (47%) or “somewhat free” (33%). But a majority (56%) think the government should have the right to prevent publications it disapproves of – more than twice as many as a decade ago. Moreover, majorities say the government should be able to limit or prohibit the sharing of false news (64%), of information or opinions that it disapproves of (54%) or that criticize or insult the president (62%), and of hate speech (62%). Yet more than half (55%) of citizens say that unrestricted access to the Internet and social media should be protected." (Key findings)
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"As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across Africa, educators, policy makers, parents, and pupils face uncertainty about the path forward. In Kenya, the government has halted all in-person teaching at the primary and secondary levels and moved to remote teaching. Survey findings show, howev
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er, how unequal access to the necessary technology is in Kenya. While regular Internet use has grown fourfold in the past decade, half of Kenyans remain offline. This is especially common in poor, rural, and less educated families, who face the prospect of being left even further behind. Radio caters to the broadest audience in Kenya, though teaching possibilities are no doubt more limited than online. To ensure inclusion and participation in online learning in the medium and longer term, the government will need to activate plans and investments capable of building e-learning infrastructure that facilitates access for all students." (Conclusion)
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"Cyber bullying has become a topical issue among school learners in South Africa. However, there is very little guidance for schools on how to deal with cyber bullying from the South African Department of Basic Education. This study investigated the perceptions of cyber bullying in primary and secon
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dary schools among student teachers in the Eastern Cape. The study made use of a quantitative survey approach to collect data from 150 student teachers at a university in the Eastern Cape. The student teachers were representative of all four of the school phases. The results indicated that cyber bullying is a serious issue at the schools but that the topic has not been incorporated into policy or the school curriculum yet. The recommendation of the study is that the South African Department of Basic Education must provide a standardized policy that schools can use to implement and enforce cyber safety behavior in the schools." (Abstract)
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"Drawing on a wide range of case studies addressing how people can be ‘othered’ in contemporary media, the chapters focus on analyses of hateful discourses about disability on Reddit, news coverage of disability and education, media access of individuals with disabilities, the logic of memes and
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brain tumour on Twitter, celebrity and Down Syndrome on Instagram, disability in TV drama, the metaphor of disability for the nation as well as an autoethnography of treatment of breast cancer. Providing a much-needed global perspective, Disability, Media, and Representations examines the relationship between self-representation and representations in either reinforcing or debunking myths around disability, and ways in which academic discourse can be differently articulated to study the relationship between media and disability." (Publisher description)
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"The factors that led to the overall unsatisfactory assessment of the project can be summarised as follows:
• The project was not anchored in any overarching reference framework. Accordingly, neither its contributions to the strategic objectives of the German development cooperation nor to any oth
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er national or international development agenda were specified. While this has nothing to do with the actual quality of the project, as already outlined in the introduction, it leaves the question of whether the OECD/DAC criteria were suitable to evaluate it.
• The organisational setup of the project was inefficient. Having two intermediary organisations with separate overheads, trying unsuccessfully to change a national implementing partner, and finally needing to involve GIZ staff on the ground increased the costs and resulted in an inefficient use of financial resources.
• During the planning of the project, fundamental rules for German development cooperation projects were disregarded: there were no preceding government consultations; implementing partners were chosen without considering alternatives (particularly at political level); neither a risk assessment nor stakeholder mapping took place; and the instruments to be applied were defined beforehand. This procedure appears unusual for GIZ.
• The lack of results at impact level can partly be attributed to the fact that the project did not have a political partner. The professionalisation of an industry/economy requires support from political decision-makers as they have the ability to establish and enforce an appropriate regulatory framework. For instance, the introduction of a tax incentive for film productions could only be achieved through collaboration with the ministries for finance and culture." (Conclusions, page 45)
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"This book presents five cases that reflect on the experiences of using practices consistent with the 'Evaluating C4D framework' [published by June Lennie and Jo Tacchi in 2013]. Case studies are important to help move from a set of ideal principles to an understanding of how the framework may be op
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erationalized within the actual realities of development institutions, organizations, and communities. The authors of each chapter focus on a few key principles from the framework and contextualize how they interpreted those principles in relation to various methods, models, and projects. As well as showing the usefulness and opportunities, they illustrate the challenges of balancing the various principles as well as real-world practical needs." (Overview of the book, page 10)
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"The objective of the study was to identify rural women's radio program preferences and listening behaviours. Survey was used to gather information from 200 rural women selected through multistage sampling from Sidama and Gedeo Zones. Descriptive statistic such as frequency and percentage were used
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to present results. Moreover, association among the different variables was tested using correlation and multiple regressions. Result from Pearson Correlation analysis indicated that there exist significant but negative association between radio listening hours and variables such as number of children, habit of listening before marriage, skill to operate radio, and education level. The result of the multiple liner regression indicated that a significant regression equation was found (F5,136)=8.679, p=0.0005) with an R2 of 0.242. Education with â-.263; p=0.001, makes the largest unique contribution to explaining the dependent, and listening habit before marriage is the next strongest unique contributor with â.242; p=0.003. Based on the results, it was recommended that health and agricultural issues should be included in programming; that more local news should be presented, that more traditional music be selected, and that program for women should be aired in the morning and evening times." (Abstract)
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"According to the largely young, mostly educated female listeners interviewed in this study, Radio Ergo focuses on important humanitarian and social issues in Somalia and is refreshingly free from clan politics. The radio stimulates rich and healthy discussions and dialogues among Somalis living ins
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ide and outside the country and provides much needed information that can transform their lives. These female listeners see Radio Ergo as laying the foundation for a much-needed space where vulnerable populations can have a voice, articulate their specific needs, access humanitarian assistance, and communicate their needs to humanitarian organizations. In addition, the radio is generating healthy dialogue and debate for the people of Somalia, who have borne the brunt of the protracted conflict and natural disasters. Radio Ergo allows its female listeners to recognize their roles and responsibilities as citizens engaged in rebuilding their lives in a new Somalia. Despite successes and achievements, the participants in Mogadishu and Baidoa noted areas for improvement. They wanted an expansion of broadcasting hours and many additional programmes and topics, as indicated above. They were particularly interested in programming on migration and women. They also wanted to hear more female voices on the radio, even though they recognized that Radio Ergo pays more attention to gender inclusion than most other radios in Somalia." (Conclusion)
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"This article analyses female journalists’ perceptions of their own role, their power in the newsroom, their influence over the news agenda and the challenges they face on a daily basis in two large media-saturated countries and emerging democracies, India and South Africa. India and South Africa
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are both nations that are trying to overcome historical legacies of patriarchal structures and gendered attitudes about women’s role. The authors conclude that female journalists articulated their experiences of newsroom culture as hegemonically masculine. While it appears that female journalists believe that women have made some strides in covering political news, they still see their influence as limited and continue to battle pre-existing professional stereotypes." (Abstract)
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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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"This report was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine women’s representation in COVID-19/coronavirus newsgathering and news coverage in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the US. It is rooted in a computational news content analysis of 11,913 publications an
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d 1.9 million stories between 1st March and 15th April 2020 undertaken by Media Ecosystems Analysis Group; an in-depth qualitative portrayal analysis of 175 highly ranked COVID-19/coronavirus stories across the six countries; quantitative analysis of eight public-facing bespoke Google surveys, as well as multi-country secondary surveys; a pronoun content analysis of COVID-19 headlines; story frames analyses using Google’s news search engine, the Internet TV News Archive in 2020 and the GDELT Project global online news archive for 2017 to 2020; and interrogation of a number of global statistical databases [...] The report has examined the news coverage of the COVID-19/coronavirus story through the lenses of three indicators of gender equality: women as sources of news expertise; news stories leading with women protagonists; and coverage of gender equality issues. The insights from the report have led to the creation of 21 recommendations which aim to support news providers who wish to amplify the substantially muted voices of women in news coverage of the COVID19/coronavirus story. The report has uncovered a substantial bias towards men’s perspectives in the newsgathering and news coverage of this pandemic across both the global north (the UK and US) and the global south (India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa). This bias operates against a backdrop of women’s effective political invisibility within the COVID-19-related decision-making process in the countries analyzed and the unique socioeconomic, health and psychological challenges that women face globally. Every individual woman’s voice in the news on COVID19 is drowned out by the voices of at least three, four, or five men. The women who are given a platform in the COVID-19/coronavirus story are rarely portrayed as authoritative experts or as empowered individuals but more frequently as sources of personal opinion or as victims/people affected by the disease." (Executive summary)
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"Canal de Moçambique is a Mozambican independent weekly newspaper that publishes investigative stories of public concern. Since its inception, Canal has relentlessly pursued and investigated cases of graft and injustice in public service and in political life such that, in the corridors of power, i
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t has earned itself the reputation of being the opposition newspaper. This context undergirds the Sunday tragedy of 23 August 2020, when an unidentified group attacked Canal’s media house. At around 8.00pm, the group broke into Canal’s offices, poured fuel on the floor, furniture and equipment, and dropped a Molotov cocktail. Until 23 August 2020, no media house had ever been attacked in this manner. The attack constitutes a turning point in the escalating crackdown on human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, information, and media freedom. For more than five years, journalists, researchers, opinion makers have been subjected to intimidation, harassment, abductions, beatings and extrajudicial killings." (Back cover)
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"Deriving from innovative new work by six researchers, this book questions what the new media's role is in contemporary Africa. The chapters are diverse - covering different areas of sociality in different countries - but they unite in their methodological and analytical foundation. The focus is on
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media-related practices, which require engagement with different perspectives and concerns while situating these in a wider analytical context. The contributions to this collection provide fresh ethnographic descriptions of how new media practices can affect socialities in significant but unpredictable ways." (Publisher description)
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"Sadly the research reveal that COVID-19 temporary measures and laws on lockdowns dented freedom of expression gains that had been made over the years with concerns that if there is no financial intervention or adoption of sustainable revenue solutions in SADC, print media that were already in finan
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cial dire straits before the pandemic, will close their doors permanently. The pandemic saw countries invoking shutdowns that restricted movement and, in some cases, resulted in companies closing causing loss of jobs and income and impacting on media revenues from newspapers sales and advertising. Findings also show that the pandemic had various effects on journalism quality, mental integrity of journalists and operational problems that rendered the work of journalists difficult [...] The findings reveal that the COVID-19 restrictions denied journalists and citizens the rights to express themselves freely, thereby interfering with the rights of citizens to access critical information that could have helped them to make informed decisions as well as fight stigma and discrimination during the lockdowns." (Executive summary)
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