"In the twenty-first century, community radio is fulfilling an increasingly important role in the world’s mediascape. This book documents the ways in which community radio broadcasters and activists are using the medium in countries around the world to challenge political corruption, aid the trans
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ition to political democracy and broadcast voices that are otherwise unheard. The contributors to the volume are academics and practitioners from five continents, many with first-hand experience of community radio. Each chapter demonstrates the pivotal role that small radio stations can play in developing, sustaining and invigorating communities. The book charts campaigns for the legalisation of community radio and relates them to a theoretical context, while providing illustrations and examples from community radio stations around the world." (Publisher description)
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"Research on Internet usage in developing regions typically focuses on user demographics or challenges to usage. However, few studies explore the needs and desires of users in developing regions—that is, what users want from the Internet—and even fewer connect those needs with the skills require
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d to meet them. This article addresses that gap by exploring Central Asian Internet users’ expectations of Internet utility and relating those expectations to usage patterns. We found that the users whose expectations were met were those who engaged in a diverse range of online activities. We also investigated the relationship between usage characteristics and diversity of online activities and concluded that frequent and occasional Internet users were equally likely to seek information online, but frequent users engaged in more diverse activities related to interaction with others, entertainment, and financial transactions." (Abstract)
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"Examining the role of memory in the transition from totalitarian to democratic systems, this book makes an important contribution to memory studies. It explores memory as a medium of and impediment to change, looking at memory's biological, cultural, narrative and socio-psychological dimensions." (
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Publisher description)
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"[...] Afghanistan is a fragile, fractured state and has one of the most fragile and fractured media, where almost anyone with sufficient funds and the opportunity to move quickly has been able to establish a media presence. This environment has enabled the flourishing of television, radio and other
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media established and owned by powerful political and religious leaders, or by those with allegiance to them. Some fear a future of increased ethnic, sectarian and factional strife being played out through the airwaves. Though there are some very successful commercial television channels, there is no independent and widely trusted national media capable of transcending or creating communication across the fracture points in Afghan society. Most media is either localised or seen as serving political, religious or other agendas. The future of the national broadcaster, RTA, still the only broadcaster with a truly national presence, is uncertain. While journalism as a whole has expanded greatly, investigative journalism remains limited. The sustainability of the newly established commercial media is widely questioned. With the total annual advertising market in the country estimated by some at little more than $20 million, there are real concerns that if donor support declines much of the media will wither or fall prey to factional, religious or extreme forces. There is no shortage of such forces. A number of media outlets already play upon ethnic and sectarian tensions. The Taliban, notorious when in power for shutting down media and banning video tape, have embraced the web and run one of the most effective media strategies in the country. In 2012, the mood music is one of compromise with the Taliban. Concern in the country is growing that new found media freedoms may be the price of that compromise. The role of donors in media support in Afghanistan is probably greater than in any other country at any other time. Such support is largely responsible for the development of a substantial media sector, but it faces criticism that it is poorly coordinated, short term and not informed by aid effectiveness principles; that it focuses too heavily on advancing the agendas of the donors; and that in some sectors it is distorting the media market in ways that create dependency and inhibit the development of genuinely sustainable Afghan media ventures." (Executive summary)
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"The main objective of the media component of the Environmental Planning and Disaster Risk Management (EPDRM) programme of GIZ in India is to enable journalists to better and more efficiently perform their roles, functions and tasks in the context of disaster risk management, i.e. information to the
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public, awareness building with regard to disaster risks and preparedness, warning in case of disasters, information on response, relief and reconstruction. In order to achieve this objective, the project has been planned under different components, viz., orientation workshops for the practicing journalists in different high-on-disaster-risk states; facilitating a virtual platform for information exchange and knowledge sharing among participants from the orientation workshops as well as other experts; and developing curriculum on reporting disaster for the journalism students of various Indian journalism institutes. Orientation workshops were conducted in seven states (Tamilnadu, Odisha, Gujarat, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Assam and Punjab) during 2010-2011. A Facebook community and a web portal have been established to facilitate the virtual exchange among the journalists and thematic experts. In order to extend awareness and capacity building activities related to disasters to journalists, the project also facilitated development of a curriculum on reporting disaster to be used in journalism departments of universities and media training institutes. A core-group of experts and trainers from media training institutes, as well as from other relevant organizations was formed, which deliberated upon the overall structure and outline of the DRR curriculum required to be introduced to the students of journalism. A team of authors and editors had then put together the contents of the curriculum along with guidance on how to use the contents, which is being produced in the form of this handbook. This curriculum was piloted in September this year, with journalism students in the North Eastern Region of India, and inputs on the training methods used were also received from faculty members during a ToT of this curriculum. This Training Handbook on "Reporting Disaster and Disaster Preparedness" provides basic concepts, case studies, and examples that can be customized as a module in a course or an entire course as part of the overall curriculum of a journalism course in Indian universities and institutes." (Preface)
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"In March 2005, a relatively nonviolent uprising ousted an authoritarian president in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. In the aftermath of the so-called Tulip Revolution, press rights advocates and journalists welcomed the promise of greatly enhanced freedoms. However, the new regime proved
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to be as authoritarian and corrupt as its predecessor and little liberalization of the press system was evident five years later. Physical assaults continued, including murders, as did harassment, libel suits, impediments to access to information, license denials and self-censorship. There was only slow movement toward privatizing of state-owned media. Independent and oppositional media also remained in financial peril due to the country’s weak economy and high poverty level. Thus, 20 years after independence and a half-decade after the Tulip Revolution, the Soviet propaganda model for a press system was dead in name, but many major attributes survived, with significant implications for the continuum of authoritarianism in other postcommunist nations. The degree to which the April 2010 coup and subsequent constitutional change to a parliamentary democracy will spur an expansion of press rights and sustain market-based independent media outlets remains speculative amid grave concerns about continuing anti-press events." (Abstract)
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"The exponential media growth in Afghanistan over the last decade is due to the enthusiasm of Afghan entrepreneurs and to support from the United States and other nations, states this report. According to the executive summary "support from the United States, the biggest donor, has waxed and waned.
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From 2002 to 2005 USAID spend $23 million to launch news media outlets and train journalists, and from 2006 to 2010 funding totaled $20.64 million. That included a couple of lean years, 2007 and 2008, when spending was only $3.3 million each year. But with the Obama administration’s Afghan military surge of 2009 there also came a media spending surge. USAID funded a $22 million project called the Afghanistan Media Development and Empowerment Project (AMDEP) for 2011, and a separate $7 million project to put news on cellphones was put to bid. Meanwhile, $183 million was allocated to the U.S. embassy in Kabul for a wide array of media projects in 2010 and 2011. And the Defense Department budgeted $180 million for information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2011 alone, some portion of which went to support Afghan media. The effectiveness of all this spending is difficult to gauge, but the smaller and more focused projects–such as creating new radio stations–tend to be seen as generally successful, while the value of the larger and broader projects–such as an anti-insurgency message campaign–is harder to judge." (Executive summary, page 4-5)
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"While the empirical emphasis of this book is on diasporic groups and their experiences with mainly new communication technologies, the topic is embedded in a broader set of questions that inform social sciences today. The book speaks to and analyses convergence cultures, community building, transna
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tional connections and processes of identity formation in the midst of these processes and relations. One of the overriding premises for the book seems to be the development within media and communication technologies and the exploration of their influence upon the increasingly mediatized social and cultural practices. New media geographies, growing virtual spaces, mediated social networks and processes of mass self-communication are all part and parcel of the contexts in which identity formation - diasporic or not - is taking place." (Foreword, page 9)
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"The Handbook of Global Health Communication offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the role of communication processes in global public health, development and social change. It brings together 32 contributions from well-respected scholars and practitioners in the field, addressing a wid
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e range of communication approaches in current global health programs; offers an integrated view that links communication to the strengthening of health services, the involvement of affected communities in shaping health policies and improving care, and the empowerment of citizens in making decisions about health; ddopts a broad understanding of communication that goes beyond conventional divisions between informational and participatory approaches." (Publisher description)
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"This book explores the role of media in democratic societies and specifically that of PSB's in Asia. It presents case studies from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Kampuchea, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Macau, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. These studies document the Asian experience in PSB while exploring if there
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is a role that such networks are playing (or can play) in creating a civic conscious society." (Back cover)
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"GISWatch 2012 explores how the internet is being used to ensure transparency and accountability, the challenges that civil society activists face in fighting corruption, and when the internet fails as an enabler of a transparent and fair society. The eight thematic reports and 48 country reports pu
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blished ask provocative questions such as: Is a surveillance society necessarily a bad thing if it fights corruption? And how successful have e-government programmes been in fighting corruption? They explore options for activism by youth and musicians online, as well as the art of using visual evidence to expose delusions of power. By focusing on individual cases or stories of corruption, the country reports take a practical look at the role of the internet in combating corruption at all levels." (Back cover)
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"This article presents an overview of the emergence of sustainability themes in communication for development and argues that there is an urgent need for a framework of sustainability indicators for communication for development and social change projects around the world. It fills a crucial gap in
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the growing body of literature by first synthesizing the most relevant data currently produced by global and local institutions, NGOs, UN-based organizations, academics, and professionals regarding assessment indicators for development projects, and second, produces a framework of sustainability indicators that can be used by a wide variety of people in the field to assess the sustainability of existing projects and the sustainable potential of planned ones. It then tests the framework in two representative cases." (Abstract)
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"En las décadas de 1970 y 1980 varias salas limeñas se llenaban de familias que iban a ver las largas y melodramáticas producciones de cine que llegaban desde la India. Hoy esas salas ya no existen, pero eso no impide que la incidencia del cine indio se haya mantenido –dvd piratas mediante– n
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i que este atraiga a nuevos fans. Ya no se trata únicamente de espectadores pasivos: además de mirar y escuchar, muchos jóvenes de origen popular se han decidido a bailar y cantar, imitar y reinventar. Esta breve etnografía propone algunas claves de lectura para la nueva dirección que el cine de Bollywood está tomando en Perú." (Página 133)
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"This anthology aims to portray the “soft” power of Bollywood, which makes it a unique and powerful disseminator of Indian culture and values abroad. The essays in the book examine Bollywood's popularity within and outside South Asia, focusing on its role in international relations and diplomacy
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. In addition to contributions that directly engage with the notion of soft power, a number of essays in the volume testify to the attractiveness of Bollywood cinema for ethnically diverse groups across the world, probe the reasons for its appeal, and explore its audiences' identification with cinematic narratives." (Publisher description)
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