"This book offers comprehensive insights into the cultural and ecological values that influence sustainable development across Asia, addressing the cultural, religious and philosophical moorings of development through participatory and grassroots communication approaches. It presents a range of cont
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ributions and case studies from leading experts in Asia to highlight the debates on environmental communication and sustainable development that are relevant today, and to provide an overview of the positive traditions of ecological sensitivity and cultural communication that may find common ground between communities." (Publisher description)
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"The barriers to data journalism identified by academics and industry are very real. Several veteran journalists with a strong history of public interest reporting lacked the basic grasp of mathematics and technology needed for the pace of the program, and were unable to complete the course. Similar
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ly, several more junior participants were enthusiastic and excelling, but did not receive enough institutional support despite an agreement with their editors. Though several partner media outlets have embraced data journalism, they are not nationwide mass media and have limited online audiences. It remains to be seen whether after the economic and editorial support of Internews ends, if these emerging data journalists are able to carve out a niche for their new craft in the competitive Pakistani media market." (Conclusion, page 17)
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"The following are the ve key takeaways from the study: Pakistani journalists work in an environment that makes self-Censorship diffcult to avoid [...] 2. Pakistani journalists exercise self-Censorship in personal settings [...] 3. Journalists perceive the policies of their own news organizations a
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s major hurdles in the way of free expression [...] 4. Pakistani journalists especially likely to curtail expression about military and religion [...] 5. Not all journalists aware of securing digital communication but most interested in knowing more [...] 6. Popular self-Censorship mitigation strategy o ers encouragement for collaboration and editorial support." (Executive summary)
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"While the State has been justifying network shutdowns as matters of “national interests”, it is interesting to note that the effect has been the total opposite. Interviewees in Kashmir and Darjeeling have stated that their mistrust in the Indian government has grown due to these actions. These
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sentiments must be taken seriously and addressed if the authorities’ intentions are truly to protect the autonomy of the country. Network shutdowns cannot be the knee-jerk reaction of administrations at the slightest sign of social unrest. The potential of social media and the Internet instead needs to be harnessed to address these problems. The State should define “national interest” in lucid terms so citizens and law enforcement officials are on the same page. There should be mechanisms in place to hold the State accountable when these definitions are crossed. Shutdowns exclude entire communities from fully participating in social, political, and economic self-determination. This has been especially true during the prolonged shutdown in Darjeeling in West Bengal. The shutdown left residents feeling even more isolated and excluded from the mainstream. Every step they take towards self-determination has been made more difficult, tedious, and expensive." (Conclusion, page 42)
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"Despite two-way communication being an important part of the “Core Humanitarian Standard”, awareness of Communications with Communities (CwC) is limited among disaster responders, government, donor and private sector stakeholders. This lack of awareness results in insufficient budget allocation
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in the design of emergency response plans. This, in turn, leads to poor feedback mechanisms with communities during disasters and poor transparency in the implementation of humanitarian interventions. To that end, there was an immediate and continued need for initiatives like this project to create awareness around importance of CwC." (Evaluation findings, page 5)
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"Ist unabhängiges Dokumentarfilmschaffen im Kaschmirkonflikt möglich? Über den Fokus auf Mobilität zeigt Max Kramer neue theoretische und methodische Zugänge zur Erforschung von filmischen Praktiken in Konfliktregionen auf. Er argumentiert, dass die Herstellung von Zeugenschaft zunehmend auf ve
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rschiedene Momente von Mobilität bezogen ist. Die vorgeschlagene Forschungsperspektive nimmt nicht nur auf die umkämpften Repräsentationen und Narrationen von Konfliktregionen Bezug, sondern ebenso auf affektive und ästhetische Momente dokumentarfilmischer Praktiken." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"These are the background case notes complied for MEMO 2018.1: Challenging Truth and Trust: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. For details on the methods behind this content analysis please see the methodology section of the report. This document contains data from over 500 s
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ources organized by country. The sources include high quality news articles, academic papers, white papers, and a range of other grey literature. As an annotated bibliography, the country cases here make use of significant passages from these secondary sources, and every effort has been made to preserve full citation details for future researchers. The full list of references can be found in our public Zotero folder, with each reference tagged with a country name." (Page 3)
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"The Agenda 2030 strives for a transformative approach that requires a broad shift in values, norms, beliefs, attitudes and practices towards more sustainable societies. In this debate on sustainable development, environmental communication and learning processes are driving forces for success. Crit
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eria and options for decisions regarding sustainable practices are a result of public discourse and transparently communicated and learned alternatives. Therefore, environmental education and communication (EEC) plays a key role in the achievement of the SDGs, particularly Goal 4 Education, Goal 11 Cities, Goal 13 Climate Change, and Goal 15 Ecosystems. In this context, the communication and learning objectives are as ambitious as the SDGs. Loss of biodiversity, degradation of ecosystems, or climate change challenges cannot be understood without assessing the complex interactions between ecological, social and economic factors." (Page 6)
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"Media in small emerging democracies face multiple obstacles caused by “smallness” and the state of “late democratization.” “Smallness” raises the question of how to develop financial independence in these countries. “Late democratization” gives rise to the challenge of maintaining p
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olitical independence. In general, small emerging democracies lack an environment that can enable a culture of independent media. This study selected two Eastern European countries–Slovenia and Macedonia, with a population of about 2 million each, and two Asian countries–Bhutan and Timor-Leste, with populations of around 740,000 and 1.2 million respectively. They all emerged in the “Third Wave” of democratization and were characterized by features of underdeveloped political institutions, insufficient public discourse, and financial vulnerability according to the previous scholarly work. Based on literature review, the researcher found that smallness, along with confounding factors of national identity and economic context, shapes the way media policy is envisioned and developed [...] Using a mixed methodology of interview and documentary research, the researcher found that the reaction of small emerging democracies to the sudden social and political changes tended to have patterns, although they differed in the paths to democratization. Furthermore, the role of media as a watchdog is undermined by the financial dependence on the government of the day. With respect to media governance, the four countries are all marked by the hierarchical mode of governing. This casts light on the fact that media policy should be constructed with input from private sectors and civil societies. A conceptual framework provided by this study can work as an analytical tool for researchers who are interested in studying similar-sized countries." (Abstract)
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"These recommendations are given to media of all four countries as they are important for the development of media in all four countries: It is necessary to create stronger communications between NGOs and the media; to foster cooperation and trust between the civil society and the media; to act as a
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watchdog by exposing corruption and help to promote good governance and accountability by providing accurate, balanced and timely information that is of interest and relevance to the public; to carry out monitoring and advocacy work within state structures; give voice to powerless groups and put pressure on public authorities; to contribute to public engagement; to diversify the sources of information for news reports; to conduct vocational trainings for journalists on investigative journalism, data journalism, fact checking; to develop editorial policy and to follow it." (Recommendations, page 49)
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"Over the past decade, radicalisation to violent extremism (VE) has become a matter of pressing public and political concern in Central Asia. Between 2000 and 5000 Central Asians responded to calls to join jihad in Syria and Afghanistan, most of them radicalised while foreign workers in the labour c
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amps of Russia’s cities. While rates are low by global standards, the phenomenon has nonetheless spurred the governments of the region to respond. The legal response taken up by Central Asian countries borrows heavily from Russia’s anti-terrorism measures. Laws are unclear and overbroad in their definitions of extremism, leading to legal uncertainty and repressive application. They set out legal penalties for those creating or disseminating VE and mandate restrictions on the dissemination of VE material, including online. A lack of clarity about what is and is not extremism has resulted in uneven and harsh application of these laws, with lengthy prison sentences for those convicted of no more than liking an extremist Facebook post [...] This report is written in three parts: Part A sets out legislative definitions of extremism and extremist content in Central Asian states, and outlines how they have been applied through criminal prosecution. Part B gives the results of analysis of VE content on Central Asian open social media, blogs and online forums from late 2018, detailing the actors, their use of social media, and the narratives they promulgate; and, Part C examines how content blocking, education and engagement have been used to counter VE content online, and assesses their success." (Executive summary)
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"Viewership, listenership and readership in the Sri Lankan media market is highly concentrated among a few media owners, many of whom have political affiliations. Limited access to ownership information and a number of regulatory shortcomings pose a further threat to media pluralism in the country."
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(http://www.mom-rsf.org/en/countries/sri-lanka)
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"The 43 country reports included in this year’s Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) capture the different experiences and approaches in setting up community networks across the globe. They show that key ideas, such as participatory governance systems, community ownership and skills transfe
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r, as well as the “do-it-yourself” spirit that drives community networks in many different contexts, are characteristics that lend them a shared purpose and approach. The country reports are framed by eight thematic reports that deal with critical issues such as the regulatory framework necessary to support community networks, sustainability, local content, feminist infrastructure and community networks, and the importance of being aware of “community stories” and the power structures embedded in those stories." (Back cover)
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"Der Auslandsjournalismus des 21. Jahrhunderts stützt sich zunehmend auf lokale Akteure der globalen Nachrichtenindustrie, die häufig als lokale »Stringer« oder »Fixer« bezeichnet werden. Auf Basis von Feldforschungen in Indien und Europa untersucht Martin Heidelberger diese lokale Teilhabe an
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der globalen Nachrichtenindustrie aus einer ethnologischen Perspektive. Er zeichnet nach, wie lokale Akteure in der Praxis Zugänge für reisende Journalisten herstellen, wie sie vor Ort übersetzen, Interviews übernehmen oder Medienprodukte für Auslandsredaktionen autonom produzieren. Die Studie zeigt, wie bei der journalistischen Kooperation lokale Standpunkte wirksam werden, die den Auslandsjournalismus verändern." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Investigative journalism in Pakistan has a long and often violent history. Reporters face death threats, prison sentences and law suits but continue to publish. In her paper, Maleeha Siddiqui looks at how data journalism has given Pakistani journalists new tools to carry out their jobs, and suggest
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s ways they can take their reporting to the next level." (Publisher description)
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"As many as 1,967 anti-Western comments were detected in the 17 monitored media outlets in 2017. In contrast to 2016 and 2015, when negative messages targeted human identity and rights, in 2017, a dominant topic was the foreign policy with the messages aimed at increasing the polarization on the for
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eign policy orientation of the country. This change in the strategic communication of pro-Kremlin actors shows that “loss of identity” was a rather tactical message that prepared the ground, while the messaging aimed at demonizing Georgia’s strategic partners (USA, NATO, EU) is of strategic nature. The United States of America accounted for the highest share of negative comments (25.9%), up by almost three times as compared to the previous year, followed by NATO (18,4%) and the West (14,1%). Compared to 2016, messages against the European Union have almost doubled (13.4%) whereas the comments about the loss of identity and human rights in anti-Western context have almost halved (12.9%). Comments against nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and the US philanthropist George Soros have trebled, as compared to 2016, and comprised 7.3%; this increase can be explained by a stepped up activity of far-right groups and their campaign to smear Open Society Georgia Foundation. Yet another change as compared to the previous years were clearer messages showcasing Russia as an alternative to the West and idealizing the Soviet system (7.2%). Comments against Great Britain (0,8%) have been mainly detected in two pro-Kremlin online media outlets – Georgia and the World, and Sakinformi. Alike previous years, the main source of anti-Western messages was media (827), followed by politicians (463), society (411), civil organizations (230) and the clergy (37). The structure of the Kremlin narrative in the Georgian discourse consists of three stages and aims at: 1. Creating threats; 2. Sowing distrust towards partners and Western institutions; 3. Ingraining a belief that Russia is the only option in fighting against the threats and that authoritative/Soviet-style governance is necessary. Four major threats were emphasized by pro-Kremlin actors: threat of war; threat of loss of territories; threat of bio subversion; threat of loss of identity." (Key findings, page 7)
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"Very few international news organisations routinely cover humanitarian affairs. Only 12 news outlets reported on all four of the humanitarian events we analysed in 2016. Because of the high costs of producing regular, original journalism on humanitarian issues, commercial news organisations do not
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usually cover humanitarian issues, with the exception of major ‘emergencies’. Most humanitarian journalism is now funded by states or private foundations. This is worrying because claiming that particular actors or activities are ‘humanitarian’ is a powerful form of legitimacy. It is important that media about the suffering does not become a vehicle for commercial or political interests. A major challenge of foundation funding is its unsustainable nature, as most foundations want to provide start-up money, rather than giving ongoing support. Meanwhile government funding can constrain where and how humanitarian reporting takes place because of foreign policy objectives and diplomatic tensions." (Executive summary)
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