"In Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes, an international team of prominent scholars examines both long-term media systems and fluctuating trends in media usage around the world. Integrating country-specific summaries and cross-cutting studies of geopolitical regions, this i
...
nterdisciplinary reference work describes key elements in the political, social, demographic, cultural, and economic conditions of media infrastructures and public communication. Enabling the mapping of media landscapes internationally, Media Compass contains up-to-date empirical surveys of individual countries and regions, as well as cross-country comparisons of particular areas of public communication. 45 entries, each guiding readers from a general summary to a more in-depth discussion of a country’s specific media landscape, address formative conditions and circumstances, historical background and development, current issues and challenges, and more." (Publisher description)
more
"This chapter looks at the status of the freedom of the press, and the legal possibilities and obstacles that affect media’s ability to hold power to account and safeguard the principles of democracy. The legal environment in countries as diverse as the United States, Egypt, and Sweden differs gre
...
atly, and affects the ability of journalists to report news to citizens that enables them to take part in the public discourse, based on theories on the public sphere. And according to theories on democracy, informed citizens can be seen as a requirement for democracy. Thus, certain conditions are necessary for journalism to be considered the fourth estate, and arguments for this are based on comparing the working conditions for independent professional journalists by semi-structured interviews with local journalists. Aspects discussed are access to official documents, media’s right to protect anonymous sources and the increase in intimidatory tactics against reporters, as the three countries are in different ways applying laws in order to regulate the media and their ability to hold power to account." (Abstract)
more
"Journalism, particularly in conflict reporting, poses significant emotional challenges, with journalists often grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder and other traumas. This research delves into the emotional dimensions of journalistic practice, examining journalists’ perspectives on menta
...
l health care, external support, and the imperative of emotional literacy in their training. Through semi-structured interviews with 20 Venezuelan journalists aged 30–62, this study sheds light on the emotional toll of reporting in Venezuela, where journalists face stressors such as economic uncertainty, political tensions, self-censorship, perceived repression, physical threats, natural disasters, and social unrest. Employing interpretative phenomenology and thematic analysis, the research reveals how pervasive risks render their work emotionally taxing, compounded by challenging living conditions and emotionally draining stories that spill over into their personal and family lives. While some seek psychological or religious support, financial constraints, cultural taboos, and geographical limitations hinder therapy for others. The findings underscore the necessity of emotional training for journalists, irrespective of gender, age, experience, contract status, or religion. Such training is proposed to equip journalists with coping mechanisms, ensuring the maintenance of ethical journalism amid adversities. Recognizing and addressing journalists’ emotional well-being emerges as crucial not only for their personal welfare but also for upholding journalistic standards." (Abstract)
more
"Responding to mounting calls to decenter and decolonize journalism, The Routledge Companion to Journalism in the Global South examines not only the deep-seated challenges associated with the historical imposition of Western journalism standards on constituencies of the Global South but also the opp
...
ortunities presented to journalists and journalism educators if they choose to partake in international collaboration and education.
This collection returns to fundamental questions around the meaning, value, and practices of journalism from alternative methodological, theoretical, and epistemological perspectives. These questions include: What really is journalism? Who gets to, and who is qualified to, define it? What role do ethics play? What are the current trends, challenges, and opportunities for journalism in the Global South? How is news covered, reported, written, and edited in non-Western settings? What can journalism players living and working in industrialized markets learn from their non-Western colleagues and counterparts, and vice versa? Contributors challenge accepted “universal” ethical standards while showing the relevance of customs, traditions, and cultures in defining and shaping local and regional journalism." (Publisher description)
more
"This volume addresses the various historical, philosophical, political and cultural parameters of censorship and freedom of expression as well as current debates involving technology, journalism and media regulation. Geographically, temporally and culturally diverse accounts of censorship and freed
...
om of expression are discussed through a broad range of perspectives and case studies. This Companion covers core principles and concerns in addition to more specialist and controversial debates, including those surrounding hate speech, holocaust denial, pornography and so-called “cancel culture”. The collection pays particular attention to the role of the media in both facilitating and suppressing freedom of expression." (Publisher description)
more
"This book brings together a vast range of pre-eminent experts, academics, and practitioners to interrogate the role of media in representing economic inequality. It explores and deconstructs the concept of economic inequality by examining the different dimensions of inequality and how it has evolve
...
d historically; how it has been represented and portrayed in the media; and how, in turn, those representations have informed the public's knowledge of and attitudes towards poverty, class and welfare, and political discourse. Taking a multi-disciplinary, comparative, and historical approach, and using a variety of new and original data sets to inform the research, studies herein examine the relationship between media and inequality in UK, Western Europe, and USA. In addition to generating new knowledge and research agendas, the book generates suggestions of ways to improve news coverage on this topic and raise the level of the debate, and will improve understanding about economic inequality, as it has evolved, and as it continues to develop in academic, political and media discourses. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike in the areas of journalism, media studies, economics, and the social sciences, as well as political commentators and those interested more broadly in social policy." (Publisher description)
more
"The book is divided into five sections that examine philosophical principles for reporting on poverty, the history and nature of poverty coverage, problematic representations of people experiencing poverty, poverty coverage as part of reporting on public policy, and positive possibilities for pover
...
ty coverage. Each section provides an introduction to the topic, as well as a broad selection of essays illuminating key issues and a Q&A with a relevant journalist. Topics covered include news coverage of corporate philanthropy, structural bias in reporting, representations of the working poor, the moral demands of vulnerability and agency, community empowerment, and citizen media. The book's broad focus considers media and poverty at both the local and global levels with contributors from sixteen countries." (Publisher description)
more
"An international team of contributors draw upon global and non-Western traditions to discuss the philosophical origins of ethics and the tension that exists between media institutions, the media market and political/ideological influencers. The chapters then unveil the discrepancies among internati
...
onal journalists in abiding by the ethics of the profession and the extent to which media ethics are understood and applied in their local context/environment. Arguing that the legitimacy of ethics comes not from the definition per se, but from the extent to which it leads to social good, the book posits this should be the media’s raison d'être to abide by globally accepted ethical norms in order to serve the common good." (Publisher description)
more
"In many parts of the Global South, coordinated political disinformation campaigns, rumor, and propaganda have long been a part of the social fabric, even before disinformation has become an area of scholarship in the Global North. The way disinformation manifests in this region, and responses to it
...
, can therefore be highly instructive for readers around the world. Through case studies and comparative analyses, the book explores the impact of disinformation in Africa, Latin America, the Arab World and Asia. The chapters in this book discuss the similarities and differences of disinformation in different regions and provide a broad thematic overview of the phenomenon as it manifests across the Global South. After analyzing core concepts, theories and histories from Southern perspectives, contributors explore the experiences of media users and the responses to disinformation by various social actors drawing on examples from a dozen countries." (Publisher description)
more
"[This book] examines the way in which foreign aid has shaped professional ideologies of journalism as part of systematic and orchestrated efforts since the beginning of the twentieth century to shape journalism as a political institution of the Global South. Foreign aid pushed for cultural converge
...
nce around a set of ideologies as a way of exporting ideology and expanding markets, reflecting the market society along with the expansion of U.S. power and culture across the globe. Jairo Lugo-Ocando argues that these policies were not confined to the Cold War and were not a purely modern phenomenon; today’s journalism grammar was not invented in one place and spread to the rest, but was instead a forced colonial and post-colonial nation-building exercise that reflected both imposition and contestation to these attempts. As a result, Lugo-Ocando claims, journalism grammar and ideology differ between societies in the Global South, regardless of claims of universality." (Publisher description)
more
"This article analyses how the political right in parts of the Global South has appropriate agendas and issues that in the past were often associated to the political left and presented them instead as their own. It does so by articulating narratives around poverty and social exclusion in the contex
...
t of anti-globalisation and nationalistic discursive regimes that appeal to popular ‘common sense’. The piece explores this argument by examining the case of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Reviewing a sample of Brazilian news media outlets and the type of messages in relation to poverty during the most recent presidential elections, it is suggested that by linking themes of social exclusion with nationalism in the news media, the political right has been able to explain poverty by means of increasing globalisation and liberalism and co-opt this agenda." (Abstract)
more
"This edited book aims at bringing together a range of contemporary expertise that can shed light on the relationship between media pluralism in Latin America and processes of democratization and social justice. In doing so, the authors of the book provide empirically grounded theoretical insight in
...
to the extent to which questions about media pluralism-broadly understood as the striving for diverse and inclusive media spheres-are an essential part of scholarly debates on democratic governance. The rise in recent years of authoritarianism, populism and nationalism, both in fragile and stable democratic systems, makes media pluralism an intellectual and empirical cornerstone of any debate about the future of democratic governance around the world." (Publisher description)
more
"The chapters in this collection offer original interrogations of the representation of humanitarian crisis and catastrophe, and the refraction of humanitarian intervention and action, from the mid-twentieth century to the present, across a diverse range of media forms: traditional and contemporary
...
screen media (film, television and online video) as well as newspapers, memoirs, music festivals and social media platforms (such as Facebook, YouTube and Flickr). Addressing humanitarian media culture as it evolved over a period of more than seventy years, the chapters offer a critical assessment of the historical precedents of our contemporary humanitarian communications. The contributors to the book are all specialists in the fields of media and communications, film studies, cultural studies, history or sociology: these different disciplinary perspectives inform their approaches to and understanding of the relationship between humanitarianism and media culture. Our authors reveal and explore the signific nt synergies between the humanitarian enterprise, the endeavour to alleviate the suffering of particular groups, and media representations, and their modes of addressing and appealing to specific publics." (Introduction, page 2)
more
"Este artículo analiza el papel que tienen los Programas de Asistencia y Cooperación Internacional en el desarrollo y formación del marco conceptual del periodismo actual y sus prácticas en el Sur Global. En particular, este analiza cómo los esfuerzos internacionales de asistencia para el desar
...
rollo han sido cruciales en el fomento de determinados modelos de periodismo, al tiempo que argumenta que estas acciones explican la actual convergencia internacional en torno a los valores fundamentales de las prácticas periodísticas, sus aspiraciones profesionales normativas y las culturas noticiosas. Al plantear esta disyuntiva, se sugiere que el periodismo no debe interpretarse necesariamente como un “acontecimiento” histórico, sino que debe considerarse como parte de un largo proceso dirigido a la construcción de un ideario de nación. De este modo, se invita al lector a examinar determinados valores noticiosos –tales como la objetividad y el equilibrio en la noticia- como parte de las estrategias históricas nacionales dirigidas a establecer y mantener el estatus hegemónico de Occidente en un mundo cada vez más globalizado. El artículo señala que los esfuerzos de ayuda internacional para fomentar el desarrollo de los medios de comunicación son claves a la hora de explicar la difusión de modelos específicos de educación y práctica periodística." (Resumo)
more
"This piece explores the role of Foreign Aid in developing the current framework in which journalism operates in the Global South. It looks at how international development efforts have been crucial in fostering particular models of journalism while arguing that this explains the current internation
...
al convergence around journalistic values, normative claims and news cultures. In so doing, the piece suggests that raise of professional journalism should not be interpreted necessarily as a historical ‘occurrence’ but rather be also considered as part of a larger enterprise to construct a sense of nationhood. In opening these questions, it invites the reader to understand news values such as objectivity, balance and fairness within national historical efforts seeking hegemonic status in an increasingly globalised world. It suggests that international aid efforts to foster media development are key in explaining the spread of particular models of journalism education and practice." (Abstract)
more
"Poor News examines the way discourses of poverty are articulated in the news media by incorporating specific narratives and definers that bring about certain ideological worldviews. This happens, the authors claim, because journalists and news editors make use of a set of information strategies whi
...
le accessing certain sources within specific social and political dynamics. The book looks at the case of the news media in Britain since the industrial revolution and produces a historical account of how these media discourses came into play. The main thesis is that there have been different historical cycles that reflect particular hegemonic ideas of each period. Consequently, the role of mainstream journalism has been a subservient one for existing elites when it comes to the propagation of dominant ideas." (Publisher description)
more
"Back in 2011, the Spanish government decided to fund the creation of the newspaper Voces in El Salvador within the wider context of public diplomacy and a favorable political atmosphere. This article examines the implications of this aid in the frame of news media plurality in that nation. We sugge
...
st that thanks to it the Salvadorian public was offered a news agenda that reflected alternative worldview. However, we also argue, the intervention itself possess a series of ethical issues and challenges that merit further study in order to inform present and future discussions around foreign aid, media and journalism." (Abstract)
more
"This chapter investigates the relationship between civic networking coalitions and public interest communication, and an opportunity to explore how the coalitions produce 'public interest-forming practices'. It examines the ability of civic networking coalitions to act and, next, to investigate whi
...
ch elements need to be in place in order for them to succeed. The chapter provides a theoretical foundation for our analytical framework. It examines the safety of journalists within the Mexican context and presents an examination of two civic networking coalitions, developed in response to the position of journalists in Mexico. The chapter draws some conclusions about the relationship between these civic forming coalitions, journalism and public interest-forming practices. It shows how media movements in the form of civic networking coalitions can successfully use public interest-forming practices, such as campaigning, community-advocacy journalism and media activism, both off- and online in order to disrupt the public space, set the agenda and enhance civic collaborative efforts." (Abstract)
more
"Cuando se habla de programas de asistencia y cooperación internacional dirigidos al desarrollo de los medios se suele pensar, por lo general, en dos áreas distintas. Por un lado, se hace referencia a las intervenciones de las grandes potencias con programas dirigidos a socavar gobiernos legítima
...
mente constituidos en América Latina. En ese sentido, se piensa en los programas de la Agencia Central de Información (CIA, por sus siglas en inglés) de los Estados Unidos para controlar, sobornar o asesinar periodistas. Por otro lado, se alude a aspectos más sutiles de la cooperación, comúnmente asociados a programas de desarrollo urbano y rural, transferencia de conocimiento y fortalecimiento de las instituciones democráticas -entre las que se cuenta el periodismo como institución social (Chaparro Escudero, 2009; Beltrán, 2006). Estas voces han sido vitales en cambiar la forma en que entendemos la relación entre programas de desarrollo y los medios en América Latina." (Resumen)
more