"For the media in Kenya to improve further, the following recommendations emerge from the study: Provide clear regulation that liberates the media at all levels, including in the editorial process; invest in practical training of media professionals to cope with the dynamic media sector and the new... availability of data from the Kenyan government; encourage participation of all citizens in public debates, by supporting community radios; improve welfare of media practitioners, including remuneration and working conditions; resolve ethical and professional issues in professional journalism; reduce different forms of censorship, including arbitrary, legalized and disguise or covert censorship, such as prohibitive taxation on production materials; invest in media access to increase the market opportunities for new businesses; do not assume that technology alone triggers social change, or that the change that accompanies new technologies are automatically democratic and beneficial; donors should stay informed about Kenyan innovation, and support it in appropriate ways, including helping to create a better enabling environment." (Recommnedations, p.29)
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"Welcome to the world of melodrama—and to the melodramas of the world. This book introduces nearly one hundred cinematic masterpieces from various periods and different cultural contexts—ranging from early Hollywood to emergent and popular Bollywood, from Latin American and New German Cinema to ...contemporary Nollywood, from classic melodrama and commercial blockbusters to arthouse film and meta-melodrama, while also encompassing a number of other local forms and styles in their hybrid or revisionist varieties. Our collection features discussions of seemingly timeless stories of love and loss, demonstrating the possibility and power of melodramatic plots to portray the overcoming of differences and antagonisms. Yet it also reveals how the melodramatic code is time and again used for asserting political claims and articulating critique—and hence for (re)producing powerful dichotomies of good vs. evil, innocence vs. corruption, virtue vs. vice. Melodrama performs and rehearses moral conflict and emotional crisis management on a broad scale, involving intimate relationships and familial relations, on the one hand, and global constellations of oppression, violence, war, and regime changes, on the other. Thus, like no other genre, melodrama indeed makes the political personal and the personal political." (Introduction, p.13)
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