"During the monitoring period (February 24 – April 24) the following tendencies have been identified: Out of the 160 false information and manipulative content, mainly disseminated in Russian and Georgian sources, the largest share (49.4%) was directed against Ukraine, followed by disinformation a
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gainst the West (28.1%). Part of the false and manipulative content was aimed at justifying Russia’s actions (16.3%). In order to evade Russia’s responsibility for human casualties, the Kremlin’s propaganda has resorted to the tactic of “whataboutism” – in response to accusations, the Russian side has been arguing that the Ukrainian side was the one killing the civilian population and that the population was endangered not by Russian troops but by the actions of the Azov Battalion and other so-called ‘Nazi groups.’ The denial of Russian responsibility for the military intervention in Ukraine was also bolstered by deliberate disinformation, reinforcing the idea that Ukraine was fabricating information about the victims (Mariupol blogger story, Bucha Massacre). Visual manipulations, including those related to the pandemic, were often used for this purpose [...]" (Key findings)
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"The following report reflects the results of media content monitoring to analyze conflict coverage by Azerbaijani- and Armenian-language regional platforms. In addition, the report incorporates conflict-related qualitative data acquired from specific Russian- and Georgian-language Facebook accounts
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. The study aims to identify the degree of media's adherence to professional standards of conflict reporting and the potential spread of disinformation and hate speech. The study applied a mixed methodology - namely, Internews' conflict coverage assessment methodology, which relies on quantitative and qualitative methods and was adapted for use in the context of Georgia. The study has also utilized the Facebook analytics tool CrowdTangle for social media monitoring. The report reflects the results of monitoring conducted between May 1, 2021 and January 31, 2022." (Introduction)
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"This study examines the framing of media and information literacy issues in media projects financed by the Latvian Media Support Fund and discusses the professional quality of media and information literacy (MIL) related content with project beneficiaries and media experts. The study uses the ideol
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ogical model of literacy, linking it with the meta-journalistic approach to explore changes in MIL-related journalistic professional epistemology. Employing the three datasets (journalists and editors’ survey, framing analysis of MIL-focused media content, and qualitative semi-structured interviews), the research concludes that MIL representation in the commercial media is mostly superficial, and the audience is not offered the range of MIL competencies appropriate for the contemporary understanding of the notion. MIL content in the media is represented using educational, warning, and formal MIL framing." (Abstract)
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"This article describes how the mass media in Ghana use quantitative information to communicate the prevalence of child labour. During the period 2000–2020, stories about child labour frequently appeared in Ghana’s mass media. Within nearly 30 per cent of the stories, at least one numerical quan
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tification is used. Quantifications appear to be constructed primarily to dazzle readers. The large numbers and the weight of the technical jargon used would appear to significantly reduce the potential to inform. We ask why successive governments have not used the mass media tools at their disposal to more effectively address the complex policy problem of child labour." (Abstract)
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"In late February 2022, Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine which sent shockwaves around the world. As the world responded with sanctions against Russia, Moscow increased its public relations campaign to justify its invasion and recast the narrative in the media and on the inter
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net. The Malaysian government’s initial responses were mixed, with the Prime Minister refraining from naming Russia as the aggressor but ultimately voting to support the UN resolution to condemn the invasion. Malaysian social media were abuzz with discussions on the conflict, with different groups articulating both condemnation and support for Russia. The research in this paper, using digital ethnography, examines pro-Russian sentiments and unpacks them for possible explanations for why such views prevail amongst Malaysians. Four key themes emerged from our analysis. These were: perceived Islamist solidarity, pervasive animosity towards Western hegemony, preference for neutrality and pacifism, and the delegitimization of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy." (Executive Summary)
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"This report leverages social media data to provide real-time measures of how diverse elites have strategically co-opted protest narratives during Lebanon's 2019 October revolution. Social media data provides temporally granular measures of elites' political communication strategies, as well as thei
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r ability to spread their messages and influence online discourse more broadly. Qualitative evidence suggests that Lebanese elites have often engaged in co-optation strategies aimed at undermining and fragmenting opposition movements, including during the 2019 revolution. Twitter data enables us to track elites' shifting strategies systematically, evaluating when and how they pursue co-optation and counter-narrative strategies in real-time." (Introduction, page 2)
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"This article examines the roles of social media on youth’s political participation in the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria. It interrogates the roles played by these communication tools in the emancipation and agency of youths while revealing the double-edged implications the devices may have on
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the democratic processes and aspirants. The article employs both primary and secondary methods of data sourcing. Primary data were obtained from in-depth interviews with social media ‘influencers’ who played vital roles during the 2019 General Election in Nigeria. Further data were obtained from selected social media accounts of prominent politicians and analysed using content analysis. Secondary data were extracted from books, articles, newspapers and magazines. Also, the study was contextualised using use and gratification theory. The study concluded that social media played a vital role in the 2019 General Election in Nigeria. It revealed how social media contributed to citizens’ power and agency through debates and narratives which were instrumental in agenda-setting for the ruling class and citizens’ democratic expectations." (Abstract)
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"History textbooks are the only history books that the majority of people read in their lives. This article investigates the impact of history textbooks on young Chinese people’s understanding of their nation’s modern history, as revealed on the popular microblogging site SinaWeibo.We analysed p
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osts related to history textbooks and their representations of three contentious turning points in the communist historical narrative: the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the nationalist assault on the communists in 1927 and the Yan’an Rectification Movement of 1942. Widespread engagement with and recollection of history textbook content indicates a substantial impact of these textbooks on people’s understanding of the past and a willingness to relate that past to the present. Responses to textbooks vary widely, from acceptance of the textbook narrative and the expression of strong patriotic and emotional connections to the past as presented in textbooks to open and angry critique." (Abstract)
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"Who constructs Africa’s global media image? That is the main focus of this longitudinal study. It looks at both the journalists and the news sources applied in the British press coverage of Africa between 1992 and 2017. Four British national newspapers (The Guardian, Financial Times, The Times, a
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nd Daily Mail) and a mixed research approach (content analysis and semi-structured interviews) were used. A total sample of 7027 articles were utilized, while nine journalists were interviewed. This study discovered that the British newspapers’ coverage of Africa was dominated by Western journalists and the news sources used in the articles were a proportionate mixture of both African and Western sources, especially in the quality newspapers. It also uncovered that Africa’s global influence, in addition to other factors impact on the UK newspapers’ coverage of Africa. This study concludes that there are some positive changes in the post-colonial British press coverage of Africa, especially in their use of news sources, but there are still some elements of neo-colonialism and racism in the British newspapers’ use of journalists in reporting on Africa." (Abstract)
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"This article aims to determine how digital nationalism influences gender politics in the context of gender-issue debates on Chinese social media platforms. To this end, I present an original case study, collecting empirical data from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) websi
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te, Zhihu. By using a mixed-method research design, consisting of content analysis (CA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I explored gender-issue debates between Chinese internet users. The analysis reveals how such debates inform divided opinions between women and men internet users, and how misogynistic men invoke a nationalist discourse to distort the debates." (Abstract)
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"This study uses TikTok as a novel medium to extend the literature on online activism. It adds to the emergent body of knowledge about playful political participation among youth. It also explores how creative micro-videos can be a force to create momentum and shape opinions around social and politi
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cal topics. A content analysis of 203 TikTok videos reflecting the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict that took place in Sheikh Jarrah in 2021, was used to understand the extent to which TikTok's platform's affordances were used and examine the message frames that emerged when online users disseminated messages of affect and solidarity with the Palestinians during the Sheikh Jarrah incident. Findings: The study showed that TikTok affordances encourage virality and creative crafting of direct and indirect political content, making the platform a space for political expression, mobilization, and online activism. The affordances used during the TikTok Intifada were visibility, editability, association, and persistence. The two most prominent frames were the use of hashtags to promote the cause, followed by direct political content. Practical implications: Researchers are given guidance on how TikTok design elements are now allowing a very young segment of users to become producers of political content in a way where messages are creatively crafted using the platform's affordances." (Abstract)
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"This work examines more closely the standardizing and the customizing aspects of active factchecking outlets in Portuguese-speaking countries, focusing on the verification methods and organizational models in use. Based on Content Analysis, we collected manually 318 posts during June 2019 from each
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fact-checking outlets website and then examined each post according to six general concepts: discourse, sources, context, classification, graphic representation, and financing. There were 15 active fact-checking outlets in Brazil (13) and Portugal (2). No active outlets were found in the African countries. Findings: Although there is room for inventiveness in fact-checking practices, it is restricted to the classification models adopted and the graphic representation demanded by them. Only two largest Portuguese-speaking countries (Brazil and Portugal) have active fact-checking initiatives during the study period. In Mozambique, we found the outlet named Mozcheck that was inactive with no published content during the research period. From our analysis, we detected a pattern between the type of misinformation and the media to which it is most often linked: false information was circulated mainly in texts, while false contexts were mainly circulated in videos and images led to more manipulated content." (Abstract)
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"The spread of disinformation about science in social media has been a major concern worldwide, especially at a time of crisis in which all institutions that produce knowledge and truth, including science, are delegitimized or discredited by society. Given this, the purpose of this research is to ma
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p the circulation of information on the most frequent conspiracy theories in Brazil, seeking to identify actors, discourses, and interactions on different digital platforms. Using a mixed methodology for identifying informational flows among supporters of conspiracy theories on Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube, the results show that, even though there is distrust about the relationship between science, government and industry, scientific authority is a symbolic capital of extreme importance for the circulation of information on conspiracy theories related to science." (Abstract)
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"This report examines at Kenyan news media coverage of the 2022 elections, focusing on four key publications, nine television stations, 11 radio stations, and three digital media channels. The report further pays particular attention to the coverage of the four presidential candidates, focusing on w
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ho appeared on the front pages of the newspapers, the volume of coverage on each of them, how much space or airtime was dedicated to each candidate across the three media platforms monitored, and the tone of coverage of the contenders. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are shared." (Introduction)
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"While social media offer an unprecedented opportunity for orchestrating large-scale communication campaigns, it is often difficult to track audience responses on various digital platforms over time and to ascertain if their engagement is aligned with the original intention. In this article, we shar
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e a promising solution—the purposive embedding and tracking of unique content elements as “markers” using text analytics techniques. Four markers were introduced in an Indian melodramatic television serial, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything), which was part of a larger transmedia edutainment initiative in India to promote sanitation, family planning, and gender equality. These markers served as anchors for audience engagement with the originally intended messaging embedded in the narratives as well as for program monitoring and evaluation. We applied various web-based tools to systematically track marker-related engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube across eight months. We also conducted semantic network analysis to better understand how marker-related social media comments evolved over time. Our investigation of using markers for digital engagement and narrative exchange in MKBKSH makes an important and timely methodological contribution to the scholarship and praxis of social and behavior change communication." (Abstract)
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"The influence of Russian state-run foreign media (RT, Sputnik et al.) on public opinion in Western democracies is now common knowledge - regardless of its political qualification. Well-documented analyses are available, e.g., from the USA, France and Germany. The German government has also repeated
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ly pointed out the dangers of Russian state propaganda for the German media landscape. The European Parliament has repeatedly called for member states to adopt strategies against "hostile propaganda" from Moscow. The EU Commission has set up a small department to detect fake Russian news." (Introduction)
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"The topic of the war in Ukraine dominated the media during the first three months of the war and completely marginalized all other topics. The most foreign actor reported on most in the media was Russia, while the countries of the West, the US, the EU, and NATO were far less noticeable. Although th
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e initial open support for Russia has softened since the beginning of the war, the media continue to report in favour of Russia, and against the West. Television stations with national coverage (especially their morning news programmes), as well as parts of the daily press, are at the forefront of supporting Russia. Internet portals have a more balanced approach. Among state officials, President Vucic has monopolized the discussions of the war in Ukraine, and he is the person most credited in the media for establishing Serbia's neutral stance on this issue. Disinformation in the media is placed in such a way as to present Russia in a positive light, and the West negatively. Disinformation was most prevalent on internet portals and the printed edition of Vecernje novosti, the daily Informer, and television stations Pink and Happy." (Key findings)
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"Our main findings show that, numerically, disinformation overpowers the news. More precisely, this study identified 559 different types of disinformation cases in 494 news items disseminated in 14 (out of 15 analysed) Serbian news media. Our study found that false, misleading and manipulative infor
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mation occupy a significant portion of news in some of the analysed media. Online editions of tabloids Alo and Kurir account for more than half of all the news containing disinformation. They are followed by two printed dailies Vecernje novosti and Informer. Among the TV channels with national coverage, TV Pink more frequently disseminated disinformation than other news media. Central news of the public broadcaster Radio-television of Serbia 1 (RTS 1) had the fewest disinformation." (https://crta.rs/en/report-mapping-disinformation-in-the-serbian-media)
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"The quality of journalistic reporting in Tanzania reveals a twofold pattern. On the one hand, there is a significant increase in quality in 2022 relative to the quality performance reported in 2019. In fact, the performance in many quality criteria for all media types has improved in terms of multi
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ple sourcing, reporting from more than one perspective, explaining root causes. Nevertheless, these improved performance levels still need further enhancement for tangible benefits to materialise. On the other hand, some areas remain entirely low-key and need drastic changes. In this regard, there are still fewer pieces than 2019 offering opinion and viewpoints (11%), and hardly any media pieces showing opposing viewpoints in the same unit (below 2%). Moreover, few media units (below 4%) express arguments critical of the government. This neglected area should be a source of grave concern and one that requires attention from all and sundry in the media fraternity. The positive development occurred mainly on TV newscasts and programmes. Multiple sourcing, reporting with more perspectives, root causes manifested in 2022 mainly in both TV newscasts and programmes. A notable increase in performance is also evident in radio news, albeit on a lesser scale than on TV. In radio programmes, the performance level has stabilised with no notable upward movement. In contrast, newspapers exhibited a minor positive development. Apparently, some TV and radio stations improved their quality of journalistic reporting at a time when the print sector stagnated." (Executive summary)
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"Neste relatório, o NetLab UFRJ reúne os principais resultados do monitoramento de redes de desinformação multiplataforma a partir dos aplicativos de mensageria. Analisando 115,3 mil mensagens veiculadas em grupos públicos do Whatsapp e 180,9 mil em grupos e canais públicos do Telegram, identi
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ficamos o compartilhamento de links externos, narrativas segmentadas, e tendências que podem contribuir para compreender e mitigar os efeitos da desinformação no segundo turno das eleições." (Netlab Blog)
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