"Why are organisations such as Vice and BuzzFeed investing in journalism and why are pedigree journalists joining them? Why are news organisations making journalists redundant but recruiting technologists? Why does everyone seem to be embracing native advertising? Why are some news organisations mor
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e innovative than others? Drawing on extensive first-hand research this book explains how different international media organisations approach digital news and pinpoints the common organisational factors that help build their success." (Publisher description)
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"By investigating the content of 62 blogs from four different ideological streams, this study specifically focuses on the Cuban blogosphere to address the question of how political consciousness and potential for collective action may emerge in blogging practice. Findings show that (1) critical eval
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uations, personal narratives and traditional socialist rhetoric mix as the raw materials of an emerging online political debate; (2) this particular mix varies depending on the political leaning of the bloggers; (3) the potential for collective action is very limited mostly due to the lack of a strong agency component among critical bloggers and the still heavy presence of an outdated socialist rhetoric among state-aligned bloggers." (Abstract)
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"This study aims to examine journalistic convergence in China. Using qualitative data drawn from the case study of Shenzhen Press Group in Guangdong, South China, we argue that the media's response to the Chinese government's push for media convergence is simply a gesture of compliance. While media
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management do not consider convergence as a prime concern, rank-and-file editors and journalists respond to media convergence with non-cooperation or non-acceptance. The study concludes, on the basis of the specific contexts in which China's media convergence operates, that social context and, in particular, the relationship between media and state should be fully taken into consideration in studies of media convergence." (Abstract)
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"The Mapping Digital Media research confirms that digital television and the internet have had a radical impact on media businesses, journalists, and citizens at large. As might be expected, platforms distributing journalism have proliferated, media companies are revamping their operations, and citi
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zens have access to a cornucopia of news and information sources. Other findings were less foreseeable: digitization has brought no pressure to reform state broadcasters, less than one-third of countries found that digital media have helped to expand the social impact of investigative journalism, and digitization has not significantly affected total news diversity. The Global Findings reveal other common themes across the world: Governments and politicians have too much influence over who owns, operates, and regulates the media. Many media markets are rife with monopolistic, corrupt, or untransparent practices. It’s not clear where many governments and other bodies get their evidence for changes or updates to laws and policies on media and communication. Media and journalism online offer hope of new, independent sources of information, but are also a new battleground for censorship and surveillance. Data about the media worldwide are still uneven, unstandardized, and unreliable, and are often proprietary rather than freely accessible." (Website Open Society Foundations)
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"Our research confirms that the Persian blogosphere has undergone significant shifts since the late 2000s as a result of a confluence of multiple factors: state intervention, the rise of social networking sites, changes to iran’s socio-political culture, and personal/professional issues. Our study
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finds that these factors have indeed resulted in a general dilution of Blogestan, as indicated by declines in blogging activities and the number of active blogs in our sample. Changes to the internal dynamics of the Persian blogosphere are also evidenced by shifts in blog content, how audiences interact with blogs and bloggers, and blogger-to-blogger relationships.." (Page 3)
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"El objetivo del estudio es conocer cuántos medios digitales tiene el Ecuador y determinar los niveles de actualización, secciones, hipertextualidad, multimedialidad, interactividad, redes sociales y herramientas multimedia que están empleando; esto permite comprender los procesos y lógicas de t
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rabajo de los medios de comunicación digitales [...] La muestra útil alcanzó 254 medios de comunicación, de los cuales la mayoría pertenece a medios tradicionales, periódicos, radios, revistas, canales de televisión y únicamente 34 medios de comunicación nativos digitales." (Resúmen, página 5)
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"Central to the work represented in this issue is what we have called the emergence of new media entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa. These actors generate a multitude of new (and often not easily definable) genres of information as well as entertainment and distraction, but also persuasion and heal
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ing (Böhme 2013). They are often categorized as cultural brokers (cf. Thalen 2011), mediating between dispersed audiences and spaces of communication, and taking advantage of their privileged access to new media technologies and/or advanced positions in the media field. Thus, we propose to refer back to quite classical notions of intermediaries, stemming especially from the realm of political and economic anthropology, such as brokers or middlemen (cf. Boissevain 1974, 148; Lewis and Mosse 2006), interpreting these figures mainly as entrepreneurs who control second order resources such as information, social relations, or channels of communication. In our articles we exemplify the relevance of such a conceptualization for contemporary African media fields, also beyond more functionalist aspects as we discuss their often ambiguous positions as well, caught as they are between contradicting loyalties to clients and colleagues or authorities, and also between professional standards and aspirations on the one hand and the need for income on the other. This category of media entrepreneurs, benefitting fromthese newopportunities and opening new social spaces and realms of creativity, may include journalists, radio producers (cf. Gunner et al. 2011), media technicians, or artists working within private as well as public structures, as well as those who are establishing institutions that offer media-related training, counselling, and marketing. Other media entrepreneurs are, for example, individuals who, thanks to their mass-mediated appearances and particular preaching style, draw large groups of supporters in their role as religious or political actors (Meyer 2003, cf. also the contribution by Sounaye). Examples of such media entrepreneurship also include the rising number of independent media production outlets, studios, or PR agencies doing public or private contract work, and who often profit from the new opportunities raised by national and transnational ventures in commerce and finance which require advertising and publicity. As already indicated, among those who are benefitting most from these new opportunities are many young people, often graduates, who have not always received formal training to prepare them for a job in media production, but who make their way through the various steps of internship, freelance, and contractualwork, often combining severalmedia activities in the press, in radio andTV, or asPRofficers. Some have even been successful at establishing themselves as leading media figures or local celebrities in this field." (Page 49)
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"In this policy paper, ARTICLE 19 proposes a set of recommendations to state actors and policy makers about what they should do to promote and protect the rights of bloggers domestically and internationally. It also gives practical advice to bloggers about their rights and explains how - and in what
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situations - they can invoke some of the privileges and defences that traditional journalists have found vital to the integrity of their work [...] ARTICLE 19 argues that it is no longer appropriate to define journalism and journalists by reference to some recognised body of training, or affiliation with a news entity or professional body. On the contrary, ARTICLE 19 believes that the definition of journalism should be functional, i.e. journalism is an activity that can be exercised by anyone. Accordingly, it argues that international human rights law must protect bloggers just as it protects journalists. The policy paper therefore addresses the key areas that bloggers are likely to face, that is: licensing, real-name registration (vs. anonymity), accreditation, the protection of sources, protection from violence, legal liability and ethical responsibility and suggests ways for them to be addressed." (Executive summary)
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"Examines the impact and reach not only of well-known bloggers such as Cuba’s Yoani Sánchez but also the independent Saudi journalist Ahmed Al Omran, who started writing the Saudi Jeans blog as a pharmacy student to improve his English skills and combat stereotypes about his country; Atiaf Alwazi
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r, the Yemeni activist and researcher who writes the “Women from Yemen” blog; Kajsa Hallberg Adu, a young Swedish political scientist who has become a leader of the blogosphere in her adopted country of Ghana, and Iris Cecilia Gonzales, a Filipina reporter whose desire to put a human face on economic stories helped her gain an international platform for her blogs about inequality." (Introduction)
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"Blogs have become a communicative alternative for Cuban civil society in recent years. Cuban communities, inside and outside the island, are characterized by substantial ideological differences and economic gaps that highlight the challenges for consensus building and collective action in the count
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ry’s politics. Information and communication technologies (ICTs), however, are gradually facilitating the creation of spaces outside the control of the state for the exchange of ideas about the present and future of the nation. Through content analysis and qualitative interpretation, we undertake a case study of the most renowned Cuban blog, ‘Generación Y’, to evaluate users’ participation, the content they generate for the site, and the nature of debates taking place within it. Our findings show that while this blog opens an unprecedented opportunity for Cubans to engage in relatively unrestricted political dialogue, its users tend to favour expressive participation and antagonistic exchanges over the rational deliberations associated with traditional conceptualizations of the notion of the public sphere." (Abstract)
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"Following the revolutions, the battle for the Arab blogosphere has turned from being a competition over accessing the Internet and circumventing government controls to a cyberwar for the predominant narrative through Facebook, Twitter, and traditional media [...] Social media is reinvigorating trad
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itional print and broadcast media, including satellite networks, which are adopting multi-platform strategies [...] Social media is serving as political cover: News outlets are recognizing the benefit of using social media to preempt official repercussions by disseminating sensitive stories first on social media sites and in other cases to gauge possible reaction before going to print or air [...] Numerous media observers and professionals have complained that professional journalists, citizen journalists, bloggers, activists, and pro-government contributors in the region lack ethics, do not understand libel, practice incitement, and fail to meet other international journalism and legal standards [...] While user-generated content is plentiful, authenticating this content can take up valuable resources. Training for citizen journalists and non-journalists who are online would help established media outlets and the public to gauge the accuracy and authenticity of news and information." (Executive summary, page 8-9)
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"We investigate the extent to which new media impacts upon political processes in Indonesia and the factors that affect it. Reflecting on the Indonesian political systems and structure, and detailing some empirical case studies on new media use, we argue that most uses of social media, including tho
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se aimed at influencing political processes, are ad hoc. There is an imminent need for strategising the use of new media in civil society in order to enable them address societal changes at large in a more sustained, engaged civic activism." (Abstract)
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"Instead of defining a priori the types of websites to be included in a national web, the approach put forward here makes use of web devices (platforms and engines) that purport to provide (ranked) lists of URLs relevant to a particular country. Once gathered in such a manner, the websites are studi
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ed for their properties, following certain of the common measures (such as responsiveness and page age), and repurposing them to speak in terms of the health of a national web: Are sites lively, or neglected? The case study in question is Iran, which is special for the degree of Internet censorship undertaken by the state. Despite the widespread censorship, we have found a highly responsive Iranian web. We also report on the relationship between blockage, responsiveness and freshness, i.e., whether blocked sites are still up, and also whether they have been recently updated. Blocked yet blogging portions of the Iranian web show strong indications of an active Internet censorship circumvention culture. In seeking to answer, additionally, whether censorship has killed content, a textual analysis shows continued use of language considered critical by the regime, thereby indicating a dearth of self-censorship, at least for websites that are recommended by the leading Iranian platform, Balatarin." (Abstract)
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"The SuBMoJour study has mapped journalistic startups in nine countries. It has created an online database detailing the business models of journalistic startups that are deemed sustainable (www.SuBMoJour.net) and this accompanying narrative report. The study supports research to date that online en
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vironments offer the necessary market characteristics for niche journalistic sites and content production. There is a rich and diverse set of media case studies in the database, all with their unique interpretation of serving communities or reportage. The study was carried out across 12 months with a team of international researchers. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. Most of the 69 case studies have diversified their income to include more than one revenue source. As such, there is potential innovation in new business models by way of combining revenue sources in new and interesting ways to make their sites profitable in the long term. Some sites, particularly those born to support products, which were very much of the net, have rebundled or recombined revenue streams in relatively innovative ways." (Conclusion, page 116)
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"While this report will examine some traditional, or “legacy,” business models for media, our focus is on the economic issues that news organizations—large and small, old and new—face with their digital ventures. This report focuses on news organizations that do original journalism, defined
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for our purposes as independent fact-finding undertaken for the benefit of communities of citizens. Those communities can be defined in the traditional way, by geography, but can also be brought together by topics or commonalities of interest. We also look into media companies that aggregate content and generate traffic in the process. We confine our report mostly to for-profit news enterprises. We recognize the outstanding work done by such national organizations as ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting, as well as local sites like Voice of San Diego and MinnPost. But for the purposes of this study, we felt it was more valuable to spend our time examining organizations that rely as much as possible on the commercial market." (Introduction, page 3)
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"The handbook includes case studies gathered through interviews with newspapers in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa, including the Observer and Daily Monitor in Uganda, the Standard and the Daily Nation in Kenya, and Grocott’s Mail, the Mail and Guardian, the Sunday Times and the Sowetan in South Af
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rica, as well as News24.com – South Africa’s biggest online news provider [...] In addition to the accounts of successful mobile services, the handbook includes analysis and expert advice covering the key questions media houses should ask themselves when going into mobile. The handbook also provides detailed how-to guides for potential mobile services African media houses could offer." (www.wan-ifra.org, August 9, 2011)
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