mediadev library

Mapping Responses to Social Media Threats

Lisa Schirch

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 17 pp.

"This report identifies social media threats - surveillance, addiction, disinformation, polarisation, dangerous speech - on social cohesion, human rights, violence and democracy and then identifies creative options for addressing those threats through: building a better bridge between offline dialog ... more

Social Media Literacy, Ethnicity and Peacebuilding in Kenya

Fredrick Ogenga

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 14 pp.

"Kenya has experienced a cycle of political violence following a series of controversial elections that have centred on ethnic competition, leading to human rights abuses, deaths, destruction of property and a downward economic spiral. At the core of election violence, witnessed in 2007/8 and in 201 ... more

The Use of Social Media in Colombian Democratic Spaces: A Double-Edged Sword

Diana Dajer

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 27 pp.

"The world is flooded with news of how social media is being used to influence democracy in conflict-affected areas, for better or worse. Colombia is not an exception. The era of social media brings opportunities and challenges to a broad range of stakeholders in this country, to harness the power o ... more

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Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
Top Insights

Maggie Dwyer, Thomas Molony (eds.)

London: Zed Books (2019), xiii, 299 pp.

"Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstra ... more

Politik in der digitalen Gesellschaft: Zentrale Problemfelder und Forschungsperspektiven

Jeanette Hofmann, Norbert Kersting, Claudia Ritzi, Wolf J. Schünemann (eds.)

Bielefeld: transcript (2019), 329 pp.

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WorldCat (5)

Social Media Activism in Egyptian Television Drama: Encoding the Counter-Revolution Narrative

Gianluca P. Parolin

Middle East Critique, volume 28, issue 2 (2019), pp. 143-160

"Egyptian Ramadan TV series have explored the relationship between law and television in a number of iterations over the past few years. In 2017, the most watched production (115 million views on YouTube), Kalabsh, went one step further by examining the interaction between television broadcasting an ... more

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Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication Are Changing Our Lives

Mark Graham, William H. Dutton (eds.)

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. (2019), xxx, 438 pp.

"How is society being reshaped by the continued diffusion and increasing centrality of the Internet in everyday life and work? Society and the Internet provides key readings for students, scholars, and anyone with a serious interest in understanding the interactions of the Internet and society. Spaw ... more

Digital Threats to Democracy

Marianne Elliott, Jess Berentson-Shaw, Kathleen Kuehn, Leon Salter, Ella Brownlie

The Workshop;Law Foundation;Luminate Foundation (2019), 244 pp.

"At the heart of the challenges to democracy posed by digital media are three core problems: 1. Platform monopolies: two or three corporations control not only our means of communication, but also the content which is distributed, both of which are core aspects of our democracy. Whilst the market po ... more

Ciudadanos reemplazados por algoritmos

Néstor García Canclini

Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press;Centro Maria Sibylla Merian de Estudios Latinoamericanos Avanzados en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (CALAS) (2019), 174 pp.

"Nuestras opiniones y comportamientos, capturados por algoritmos, quedan subordinados a corporaciones globalizadas. El espacio público se vuelve opaco y lejano. La desciudadanización se radicaliza, mientras algunos sectores se reinventan y ganan batallas parciales. Pero los usos neoliberales de la ... more

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The Internet and Political Protest in Autocracies
Top Insights

Nils B. Weidmann, Espen Geelmuyden Rød

New York: Oxford University Press (2019), x, 205 pp.

"Eight years after the Arab Spring there is still much debate over the link between Internet technology and protest against authoritarian regimes. While the debate has advanced beyond the simple question of whether the Internet is a tool of liberation or one of surveillance and propaganda, theory an ... more

WorldCat (7)

Social Media in Africa: An Emerging Force for Autocrats and Activists

Geoffrey York

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 415-430

"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med ... ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423) more

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Mass Media in the Post-Soviet World: Market Forces, State Actors, and Political Manipulation in the Informational Environment After Communism

Peter Rollberg, Marlene Laruelle (eds.)

Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag (2018), 446 pp.

"This collection covers the major trends of the media environment of the post-Communist world and their recent development, with special focus on Russia and the post-Soviet space. The term ‘media environment’ covers not just traditional print and electronic media, but new media as well, and rang ... more

Democracy Disconnected: Social Media's Caustic Influence on Southeast Asia's Fragile Republics

Brandon Paladino

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution (2018), 23 pp.

WorldCat (6)

Die informierte Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde: Warum die Digitalisierung unsere Demokratie gefährdet

Stephan Ruß-Mohl

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb), Sonderausg. (2018), 367 pp.

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Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya

Nanjala Nyabola

London: Zed Books (2018), xxiv, 273 pp.

"Explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how ‘fake news’, a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president’s recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from ... more

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Ciudadanía digital & democracia participativa

Francisco Sierra Caballero, Salvador Leetoy, Tommaso Gravante (eds.)

Salamanca: Comunicación Social;CLACSO (2018), 252 pp.

"Ciudadanía digital y democracia participativa trata de describir experiencias concretas y procesos de apropiación y rebelión frente al actual statu quo tecnocrático a través de dos ejes conceptuales claramente definidos:--Propuestas teóricas y analíticas para el estudio de la Ciudadanía Dig ... more

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Digital Media and the Politics of Transformation in the Arab World and Asia

Carola Richter, Anna Antonakis, Cilja Harders (eds.)

Wiesbaden: Springer VS (2018), vi, 189 pp.

"In times of increasing mediatization and digitalization media play an important role in political and societal transformation processes. The authors of this volume take an actor-centered perspective to shed light on current cases in Arab and Asian countries. They inquire into the ways processes of ... more

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Der politische Mythos von sozialen Medien als liberalem Cyberspace und freier Online-Meinungsäußerung in Vietnam

Bui Hai Thiem

In: Vietnam: Mythen und Wirklichkeiten

Jörg Wischermann; Gerhard Will (eds.)

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb) (2018), pp. 212-234

"Während viele Bürgerinnen und Bürger sowie Beobachter große Hoffnungen hegen, die sozialen Medien könnten ein wirksames Instrument sein, um soziale Bewegungen zu Themen wie Ungleichheit, Ungerechtigkeit und Umwelt in Gang zu setzen, ist es zuweilen schwierig, die massenhaften Reaktionen in den ... more

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Online Activism in Politically Restricted Central Asia: A Comparative Review of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan

Bahtiyar Kurambayev

In: Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change

Jan Servaes (ed.)

Singapore: Springer (2018), pp. 961-976

"This comparative study examined the Internet’s role and wider social media in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, three Central Asian countries in the democratization process. Specifically, this work aims to discuss how the Internet and social media are allowing Internet users wider opportuni ... more