"Unruly Speech explores how Uyghurs in China and in the diaspora transgress sociopolitical limits with "unruly" communication practices in a quest for change. Drawing on research in China, the United States, and Germany, Saskia Witteborn situates her study against the backdrop of displacement and sh...ows how naming practices and witness accounts become potent ways of resistance in everyday interactions and in global activism. Featuring the voices of Uyghurs from three continents, Unruly Speech analyzes the discursive and material force of place names, social media, surveillance, and the link between witnessing and the discourse on human rights. The book provides a granular view of disruptive communication: its global political moorings and socio-technical control. The rich ethnographic study will appeal to audiences interested in migration and displacement, language and social interaction, advocacy, digital surveillance, and a transnational China." (Publisher)
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"This guide was created to drive conversations within technology entities to reconsider and reconceptualize how they approach inclusive design practices. Historically, inclusion has been a “nice-to-have” add-on within digital platforms, and as such, discriminates against and excludes a large pro...portion of the world, based on factors such as race, gender, class, ability, sexuality, geolocation, language, religion etc. The guide is intended to serve as an exercise in thinking about diverse perspectives and needs of unique users when developing programs, policies and platforms. We would like to note that in this guide, accessibility is used interchangeably to refer to ‘access to the internet’ or as used in disability rights." (Introduction)
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"It seems that it is not easy for media companies to be more diverse. But it is important. A few companies are trying to appear more diverse in public but there is still much to be done. In the United States, Europe or Germany, minority groups are underrepresented throughout. Here are some of our ke...y findings: There is a significant lack of studies on diversity in the media industries besides studies on gender diversity; the distribution of money in the media industry is biased; the media indsutry is lacking bipoc and women; white males are defining the media industries; there needs to be diversity in management before there can be diversity in content." (Key findings, p.37-41)
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"Bengaluru […] generates 5,757 metric tonnes of solid waste per day. Estimates suggest that approximately 20,000-30,000 people are engaged in waste picking in the city. BBC Media Action's 'A Pathway to Respect, Identity, Dignity and Empowerment' (PRIDE) project aims to shift negative perceptions a...bout informal waste pickers and highlight their contribution to society in the city of Bengaluru in India. The first phase of the project's social media campaign to tackle these issues reached 21% of Bengaluru's population. Research shows it has improved awareness of informal waste pickers, increased appreciation of the work they do and generated discussion about how they contribute to society." (p.1)
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"Digital systems are significantly associated with inequality in the global South. That association has traditionally been understood in terms of the digital divide or related terminologies whose core conceptualization is the exclusion of some groups from the benefits of digital systems. However, wi...th the growing breadth and depth of digital engagement in the global South, an exclusion worldview is no longer sufficient. What is also needed is an understanding of how inequalities are created for some groups that are included in digital systems. This paper creates such an understanding, drawing from ideas in the development studies literature on chronic poverty to inductively build a model of a new concept: ‘adverse digital incorporation’, meaning inclusion in a digital system that enables a more-advantaged group to extract disproportionate value from the work or resources of another, less advantaged group. This new model will enable those involved with digital development to understand why, how and for whom inequality can emerge from the growing use of digital systems in the global South. It creates a systematic framework incorporating the processes, the drivers, and the causes of adverse digital incorporation that will provide detailed new insights. The paper concludes with implications for both digital development researchers and practitioners that derive from the model and its exposure to the broader components of power that shape the inclusionary connection between digital and inequality." (Abstract)
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"This edited collection explores the role of digital inclusion in the welfare and social inclusion of vulnerable people. With interdisciplinary contributors from six continents, working in diverse fields such as digital media studies, social computing, community informatics and cultural studies, the... collection brings together theoretical and applied research evidence on three vulnerable population categories: ethnic minorities, older people and people with disabilities. Each section is accompanied by a critical commentary on the research insights presented, from third sector community and policy experts. The collection explores whether vulnerable populations face similar experiences and challenges in relation to their digital inclusion status, stressing the central presence of intersectionality, and arguing for the inclusion of the age, ethnicity/immigration status and disability aspects of one's identity. At the same time, it argues for multi-directional action that tackles intersectional discrimination in the digital realm on behalf of more than one single population category or group. Challenging popular discourse on the overcoming of digital inequalities in the West, this essential book contends that accounts of non-western contexts do not focus on the parameter of vulnerability or on particular population groups." (Publisher)
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"In this article, we employed communication infrastructure theory (CIT) to analyze Gram Vaani’s (“Voice of the Village”) Covid-19 Response Network in India. We reviewed key CIT components (i.e., storytelling network and communication action context) and their applications in civic engagement, ...health disparities, and crisis mitigation. Our results showed that Gram Vaani’s Covid-19 Response Network merged all three types of CIT application into an integrated whole and extended it to marginalized rural and migrant/resident worker communities in India. In 15 months, 870,000 individuals used the organization’s Mobile Vaani platforms, made 2.5 million calls, recorded 24,880 voice reports, and shared 2,327 impact stories. Taken together, they amplified the voices of the most vulnerable, provided direct assistance, and held government agencies accountable in three major areas: health promotion and healthcare access, livelihood support and working conditions, and safety nets and essential services. We identified (1) storytelling network actors at all levels (micro, meso, interstitial, and macro), (2) enabling and constraining communication action contexts of pandemic community mobilization, and (3) specific impact pathways for different storytelling network actors to overcome barriers and leverage Mobile Vaani as an enabling and empowering communication action context." (Abstract)
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"In India, religious texts, social customs, rituals, and everyday cultural practices legitimise the use of hate speech against marginalised caste groups. Notions of "purity" of “upper-caste” groups, and conversely of "pollution" of “lower-caste” groups, have made the latter subject to discri...mination, violence and dehumanisation. These dynamics invariably manifest online, with social media platforms becoming sites of caste discrimination and humiliation. This report explores two research questions. First, what are the specific contours of caste-hate speech and abuse online? Semi-structured interviews with 12 scholars and activists belonging to Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi (DBA) groups show that marginalised groups regularly face hate and harassment based on their caste. In addition to the overt hate, DBA individuals and groups are often targeted with abuse for availing reservations – a constitutionally mandated right. More covert forms of hate and abuse are also prevalent: trolls mix caste names and words from different languages together so that their comments appear meaningless to individuals who are not keenly aware of the local context. Such hateful expression often emerges as a reaction from “upper-caste” groups to DBA resistance and social justice movements. Our respondents reported that the hateful expression can sometimes silence caste-marginalised groups and individuals, exclude them from conversations, and adversely impact their physical and mental well-being. The second question we explore is how popular social media platforms and online spaces moderate caste-hate speech and abuse. We analysed the community guidelines, policies and transparency reports of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Clubhouse. We find that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube incorporated "caste" as a protected characteristic in their hate speech and harassment policies only in the last two or three years – many years after they entered Indian and South Asian markets – showing a disregard for the regional contexts of their users. Even after these policy changes, many platforms – whose forms for reporting harmful content list gender and race – still do not list caste. Social media companies should radically increase their investment and capacity in understanding regional contexts and languages; they must focus on the dynamics of casteist hate and abuse. They will need to collaborate with a diverse set of DBA activists to ensure that their community guidelines effectively tackle overt, covert and hyper -local forms of caste-hate speech and abuse, and that their implementation and reporting processes match these policy commitments." (Eexecutive summary)
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"This book discusses how digital inequalities today may lead to other types of inequalities in the Global South. Contributions to this collection move past discussing an access problem - a binary division between 'haves and have-nots' - to analyse complex inequalities in the internet use, benefits, ...and opportunities of people in the Global South region. Using specific case studies, this book underlines how communities in the Global South are now attempting to participate in the information age despite high costs, a lack of infrastructure, and more barriers to entry. Contributions discuss the recent changes in the Global South. These changes include greater technological availability, the spread of digital literacy programs and computer courses, and the overall growth in engagement of people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and languages in digital environments." (Publisher)
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"The volume examines the risks and opportunities of a digital society characterized by the increasing importance of knowledge and by the incessant rise and pervasiveness of information and communication technologies (ICTs). At a global level, the pivotal role of ICTs has made it necessary to rethink... ways to avoid forms of digital exclusion or digital discrimination. This edited collection comprises of chapters written by respected scholars from a variety of countries, and brings together new scholarship addressing what the process of digital inclusion means for individuals and places in the countries analyzed. Each country has its own strategy to guarantee that people can access and enjoy the benefits of the information society. While this book does not presume to map all the countries in the world, it does shed light into these strategies, underlining what each country is doing in order to reduce digital inequalities and to guarantee that socially disadvantaged people (in terms of disabilities, availability of resources, age, geographic location, lack of education, or ethnicity) are digitally included." (Publisher)
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"The aim of this report is to illustrate, on the basis of online hate speech examples from six countries - Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain -, patterns of cyber hate against four communities. The topics that will be subsequently analysed are: antisemitism, antiziganism, h...omophobia and anti-Muslim hatred. Each section will follow a similar pattern by first offering a definition of the central terms, analysing the context and transnational trends and then highlighting country-specific aspects. The label "country specific" should not imply that those aspects are in any way country exclusive. However, they show different emphasis and peculiarities in the participating countries. This transnational analysis is complemented by national reports de-tailing the information and cases provided by the participating organisations." (Introduction, p.8)
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"In today's Africa racism and ethnicity have been implicated in serious conflicts - from Egypt to Mali to South Africa - that have cost lives and undermined efforts to achieve national cohesion and meaningful development. Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa sets about rethinking the role of me...dia and communication in perpetuating, reinforcing and reining in racism, absolute ethnicity and other discriminations across Africa. It goes beyond the customary discussion of media racism and ethnic stereotyping to critically address broader issues of identity, belonging and exclusion. Topics covered include racism in South African newspapers, pluralist media debates in Kenya, media discourses on same-sex relations in Uganda and ethnicised news coverage in Nigerian newspapers." (Publisher)
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"Con ocasión de los veinticinco años de nuestra fundación como asociación, organizamos una serie de mesas redondas, conferencias y talleres con la finalidad de discutir y analizar la situación de los pueblos indígenas en nuestro país pero a partir de la mirada de otras realidades de la regió...n americana. Con este fin se convocó a diversos comunicadores indígenas y no indígenas para reflexionar sobre los contenidos de los programas de TV de señal abierta, por el peso social ya descrito que este tiene. A partir de preguntas como ¿porqué la representación estereotipada de pueblos y culturas indígenas no es abiertamente cuestionada en nuestra sociedad? ¿Qué mecanismos subconscientes sostienen las representaciones que tenemos de nosotros y nosotras? ¿Los medios de comunicación están condenados a apelar a los referentes sociales (estereotipos, miedos/prejuicios) para construir sus mensajes? ¿Quién o quienes determinan los límites de la libertad de expresión en sociedades regidas por códigos y representaciones racistas? y ¿qué ejemplos o experiencias para enfrentar el racismo y construir una imagen positiva e inclusiva de los pueblos indígenas en los medios de comunicación, pueden ser aplicables a nuestra realidad? Las y los comunicadores convocados analizaron el papel de la comunicación en la construcción de sociedades excluyentes y al mismo tiempo, reflexionar sobre las capacidades y posibilidades de la comunicación para el fortalecimiento de las organizaciones indígenas y la construcción de una voz e imagen desde los pueblos indígenas, pero no solo para los pueblos indígenas, sino que sirva para afirmarnos como sociedades diversas. Racismo, Medios de Comunicación y Pueblos Indígenas es la edición de la mesa redonda titulada “Diálogo en torno al racismo en los medios de comunicación y los pueblos indígenas” realizado el 22 de junio de 2011 en los ambientes de la Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos. Con la presente publicación CHIRAPAQ, Centro de Culturas Indígenas del Perú comparte estas reflexiones y planteamientos que nos permiten unir nuestras voces y construir una imagen diversa, más cercana y cálida de nuestra sociedad." (p.8)
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"The goal of this book is to present in a systematic way the results of analysis of content of media in minority languages in four countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia), relying on past practice, expertise and research results related to analysis of minority media and ...treatment of minorities in media. The analysis conducted in 2012 by the research team gathered around this project focused, in addition to minority media content, on analysis of the legislative context and socio-economic status of minority communities in these countries." (Introduction, p.14-15)
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"Internationally, radio that operates for, or by, prisoners exists almost exclusively within the community radio context. Little has been documented about the genre so far. Raising the Civil Dead seeks to address this lack of information. It examines prisoners' radio as citizens' media, connecting d...irectly to notions of civic responsibility. It focuses on the ways in which people produce media and how these activities transform those individuals." (Publisher)
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"Gegenstand der hier vorgestellten Arbeit sind Streetpapers und deren Anpassung an ihr jeweiliges Verbreitungsgebiet. Beispielhaft werden die „Trott-war“ aus Baden-Württemberg, Deutschland, und „The Big Issue Namibia“ analysiert. Die Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Streetpapers sowie zu ko...mmerziellen Printmedien werden untersucht, unterteilt in Unterschiede bezüglich journalistischer Inhalte und struktureller Besonderheiten, und in Zusammenhang mit den Gegebenheiten im jeweiligen Verbreitungsgebiet gebracht. Im Vorfeld dieser Untersuchung wird das publizistische Phänomen der Streetpapers zusammengefasst. Länderprofile von Baden-Württemberg und Namibia sowie deren Medienlandschaften werden erstellt." (Kurzfassung)
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