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Strategies of Peace: Transforming Conflict in a Violent World

Daniel Philpott, Gerard F. Powers (eds.)

Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press (2010), xii, 380 pp.

"Generally, the book’s chapters are arrayed in three broad clusters that each makes the case for strategic peacebuilding in a different way. Chapters 1 through 4 set forth strategic peacebuilding at a general, conceptual level: the theory of strategic peacebuilding. Chapters 5 through 8 make up a ... more

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Telling Stories: Language, Narrative, and Social Life

Anna De Fina, Anastasia Nylund, Deborah Schiffrin (eds.)

Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press (2010), vi, 219 pp.

"This collection of seventeen contributions provides a small but significant window into some of the themes that, in our view, will define research on narrative in the coming years. Some of these themes have already started taking center stage— for example, the diversification of methodological to ... more

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Diasporas: Concepts, Identities, Intersections

Kim Knott, Seán McLoughlin (eds.)

London; New York: Zed Books (2010), viii, 319 pp.

"Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, this collection considers critical concepts shaping the field, such as migration, ethnicity, post-colonialism and cosmopolitanism. It also examines key intersecting agendas and themes, including political economy, security, race, gender, and material and electron ... more

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Kosovo Media Assistance Program: Final Evaluation Report

Frances Chetwynd, Jehona Gjurgjeala, David Smith

Bethesda, MD: Democracy International;USAID (2008), 44, 32 pp.

"This evaluation of USAID’s Kosovo Media Assistance Project (KMAP) took place close to the end of the three-year project, and addressed two main issues: (1) what has been the impact of KMAP? and (2) based on findings related to KMAP, what recommendations can be made to guide possible future USAID ... more

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Key Words in Religion, Media and Culture

David Morgan (ed.)

New York; London: Routledge (2008), xv, 240 pp.

"The list of critical terms selected and explicated in this book will signal many things to readers. It will certainly indicate that the study of media and religion is broadly interdisciplinary. Before the 1980s, the field, if it even was one, was largely the domain of historians of Christianity, Ch ... more

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Pursuing Just Peace: An Overview and Case Studies for Faith-Based Peacebuilders

Mark M. Rogers, Tom Bamat, Julie Ideh (eds.)

Baltimore: Catholic Relief Services (CRS) (2008), 158 pp.

"The volume begins with a general overview of faith-based peacebuilding by pastor and peace-practitioner David Steele. Several CRS staff members provided input on the early drafts [...] The case studies that follow all deal with initiatives involvi ... more

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Governance Reform Under Real World Conditions: Citizens, Stakeholders, and Voice

Sina Odugbemi, Thomas Jacobson (eds.)

Washington, DC: World Bank (2008), xxi, 525 pp.

"This book is a contribution to efforts to improve governance systems around the world, particularly in developing countries. It offers a range of innovative approaches and techniques for dealing with the most important nontechnical challenges that prevent many of those efforts from being successful ... more

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The Role and Impact of Radio in Reforming the Rural Business Environment in Africa: A Study of Private FM Radio in Uganda

Gavin Anderson, David Elliott

Bern: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Employment and Income Division (2007), 16 pp.

"The majority of the cases relate to radio programmes that have been supported by FIT Uganda (a Ugandan development company) and the FIT SEMA project (an ILO project). These interventions supported the launch of new radio programme formats that focused on business and livelihood issues. The substant ... more

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The Role of Georgia's Media - and Western Aid - in the Rose Revolution

David Anable

Joan Shorenstein Center, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2006), 32 pp.

"Aiding and training journalists and media managers, along with civil society groups, paid off in Georgia. The American and Western investment helped to generate the Rose Revolution, and resulted in a potentially more democratic, open and Western-leaning society. It was a comparatively economical, a ... more

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Working with the Media on Gender and Education: A Guide for Training and Planning

Amy North, David Aduda, Andiwo Obondoh, Lutfer Rahman, Shamima Pervin

Beyond Access;Oxfam;Africa Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA) (2006), 43 pp.

"The guide is divided into 7 sections. Each section explores a different aspect of working with the media on gender and education issues, starting with looking at education campaigning in general before focusing on gender issues in education, and the role of advocacy and the media. You will find pra ... more

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African Media Development Initiative: Sierra Leone. Research Findings and Conclusions

David Tam-Baryoh

London: BBC World Service Trust (2006), 78 pp.

"The most relevant changes that occurred during the past five years in Sierra Leone are the results of democracy (free and fair elections in 2002) and establishing the Independent Media Commission Act (IMC) of 2000 to help deregulate the formation of new media outlets. The resilience of media practi ... more

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Encyclopedia of Religion, Communication, and Media
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Daniel A. Stout (ed.)

New York: Routledge (2006), xx, 467 pp.

"This volume breaks down disciplinary walls in numerous ways. First, it combines information about the intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, and societal levels of communication into a single resource. At the intrapersonal level, new issues are raised about communication between individuals and deity ... : Why is religious experience difficult to explain in rational terms? Why is silence more sacred than spoken prayer in some religious communities? What is the nature of “thought communication” in religious meditation? Why is the use of profanity justified in some religious circles? How does idolatry reinforce religious customs and values? Why was chanting one of the first forms of religious communication? Religious information is also exchanged between individuals at the level of interpersonal communication. This volume identifies rituals that have not been adequately analyzed in terms of communication aspects: Why do some sects require public confession? Why is body decoration an acceptable form of worship in some religious groups, but not in others? How does dance communicate the sacred through metaphoric movement? What are the multiple forms of communication with the dead? Why are feasts a form of religious worship in all major religions? How does the study of organizational communication apply to religion? This volume also aids study of mediated communication to larger groups both inside and outside religious denominations. Throughout history, technology has simultaneously aided and impeded communication processes; this also applies to religious culture: How did religion change during the historical transition from orality to literacy? How did printing contribute to the diffusion of religious values in the world? Why have religious novels grown in popularity? Is television considered a religious medium? How has the Internet affected religious congregations and communities? What is religious media literacy? These are only a few of the questions addressed by this encyclopedia. Articles also deal with (1) concepts such as information, communication, and censorship, (2) denominations which exhibit different communication practices, and (3) the various media used in religious worship. Entries were contributed by scholars from various disciplines, including religious studies, communication, anthropology, sociology, ancient studies, religion and modern culture, theology, and many others." (Introduction, page xiii-xiv) more

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Covering Oil: A Reporter's Guide to Energy and Development

Svetlana Tsalik, Anya Schiffrin (eds.)

New York: Open Society Institute (2005), 156 pp.

"Over the last two years, the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Revenue Watch, working with local partners and other sponsors, have organized workshops for journalists in the oil-exporting countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria on the subject of “Covering Resource Wealth.” This book i ... more

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Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order

Jean K. Chalaby (ed.)

London et al.: Tauris (2005), viii, 264 pp.

"This book is the first to offer a global perspective on the unique contemporary media phenomenon of transnational television channels. It is also the first to compare their impact in different regions of the globe. Revealing great richness and diversity across some of the world’s main geocultural ... more

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Media, Bureaucracies and Foreign Aid: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Japan

Douglas A. Van Belle, Jean-Sébastien Rioux, David M. Potter

New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2004), ix, 179 pp.

"In many ways, this book is a simple and straightforward product of social science research. A conceptual expectation was created through the integration and extension of existing theory and research findings. The responsiveness argument presented in chapter 2 lead to the expectation that aid bureau ... more

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Storytelling in Film and Television

Kristin Thompson

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (2003), xiii, 172 pp.

"Popular films and television series tell stories in an entertaining, easily comprehensible fashion. They seem simple, yet often the audience must keep track of several characters, multiple plot lines, motifs, and thematic meanings. Television viewers often face the additional challenge of frequent ... interruptions—for commercials, for week-long gaps between episodes, and even for stretches of time between seasons. Yet they manage, remarkably, to keep track of not only a single long-running narrative, but often several simultaneously. How do film and television writers juggle the need for graspable, enjoyable stories with the many restrictions imposed by their respective commercial formats? How do those two art forms differ in the ways they tell stories? [...] Because television programs typically face far greater restrictions of time and format than films, the storytelling tactics of television often appear extremely simple, especially in situation comedies and dramas with only one or two plotlines. Since the 1980s, dramas with multiple storylines have been praised as introducing complexity into narrative television. I shall argue, however, that good situation comedies and “simple” dramas often in fact also have an underlying complexity. Indeed, many of the interesting aspects of storytelling are hidden in television in a way that they are not in most other arts. We watch television via single episodes, and those episodes may be unremarkable. Yet television is structured in ways that become apparent only if we take the long view. Multiple-episode programs structure narratives within episodes, across seasons, and across a potentially lengthy succession of seasons. To some extent, both classical films and television programs hide their own cleverness in a show of simplicity. In television particularly, the complexity fades into the tenuous connections across a series. Similarly, the virtues of the individual episode— compact exposition, swift progression from cause to effect, establishment of material for future entries in the series—make little impression unless one pays keen attention or undertakes actual analysis, either of the episode or across the season. My first chapter tackles the issue of how one might do that sort of close narrative analysis within episodes ..." (Preface, page ix-x) more

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The Media and the War on Terrorism

Stephen Hess, Marvin Kalb (eds.)

Oxford: Oxford University Press;Brookings Institution Press;Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University (2003), xv, 307 pp.

"This collection of conversations between journalists and federal officials aims to capture the tensions between the press and the government during wartime. They cover issues including military censorship and the difficulties of maintaining security in an era of satellite technology." (Publisher de ... more

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Rethinking the Media Audience: The New Agenda

Pertti Alasuutari (ed.)

London et al.: Sage (1999), 212 pp.

"The key idea of this book is to argue that a 'third generation' of reception studies and audience ethnography is presently taking shape and will establish itself in the near future. However, the division of the development of reception studies and audience research into three 'generations' outlined ... more

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Evaluating Social Development Projects

David Marsden, Peter Oakley (eds.)

Oxford: Oxfam, reprint (1998), vii, 162 pp.

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Communication Challenges of Our Time: An Asian Perspective

Teresita Z. Hermano, Alfonso B. Deza, Augustine Loorthusamy (ed.)

Manila: World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), Asia Region (1985), 133 pp.

Encyclopedia of Religion, Communication, and Media Top Insights

Encyclopedia of Religion, Communication, and Media
Top Insights