"This is the first in-depth study of how television viewers around the world respond to the ever increasing mass of information available from news programmes. It describes and interprets the type of news available and how it is understood in the context of everyday life. The study is based on news
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analysis, individual interviews and household interviews in seven countries: the United States, India, Mexico, Italy, Denmark, Israel and Belarus. Contributors include Michael Gurevitch, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Tamar Liebes, Paolo Mancini and Guillermo Orozco-Gomez." (Publisher description)
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"Through accounts and analysis of specific projects across four continents, the authors show how communication has been used to mobilize societies, to facilitate democratic participation, and to help people acquire new knowledge and skills. The book focuses on community radio and video, and health c
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ommunication, with major sections on projects in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines. Colin Fraser was one of the founders of the FAO communication section. Sonia Restrepo-Estrada has worked for a long time as a communication specialist for UNICEF in matters of health, nutrition and women's and children's rights." (InteRadio 1/98; Media Development 2/99)
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"In Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation, Anne Rubenstein examines how comic books—which were overwhelmingly popular but extremely controversial in post-revolutionary Mexico—played an important role in the development of a stable, legitimate state. Studying the relationshi
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p of the Mexican state to its civil society from the 1930s to the 1970s through comic books and their producers, readers, and censors, Rubenstein shows how these thrilling tales of adventure—and the debates over them—reveal much about Mexico’s cultural nationalism and government attempts to direct, if not control, social change. Since their first appearance in 1934, comic books enjoyed wide readership, often serving as a practical guide to life in booming new cities. Conservative protest against the so-called immorality of these publications, of mass media generally, and of Mexican modernity itself, however, led the Mexican government to establish a censorship office that, while having little impact on the content of comic books, succeeded in directing conservative ire away from government policies and toward the Mexican media. Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation examines the complex dynamics of the politics of censorship occasioned by Mexican comic books, including the conservative political campaigns against them, government and industrial responses to such campaigns, and the publishers’ championing of Mexican nationalism and their efforts to preserve their publishing empires through informal influence over government policies. Rubenstein’s analysis suggests a new Mexican history after the revolution, one in which negotiation over cultural questions replaced open conflict and mass-media narrative helped ensure political stability." (Publisher description)
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"Fox has analysed the patterns of foreign and domestic conflict and accommodation that followed the creation and development of the broadcasting industries in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The book is well organised and Fox's style is compelling. Her work o
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ffers a fresh perspective for understanding broadcasting in Latin America. She identifies two clear trends in the countries studied. In those under non-democratic regimes, the media developed in a highly monopolistic fashion, while in those under democratic regimes, commerical broadcasting was subject to regulation in the public interest and grew within a more competitive context. Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela are cases where the media developed in a highly monopolisitc fashion because there was domestic authoritarian rule. In the cases of Peru and Argentina, there was no accommodation between the media and the state, therefore the media, although commercially operated, failed to develop a monopolistic structure. Likewise, in Colombia the state parcelled out the media among different forces, while in Chile the television channels were placed under the administration of universities. In Uruguay, there was competition among different media groups, none of which was directly linked to the state. The book is able to present an alternative to theories of international relations - which usually minimise differences among countries and overplay economic interests - and focus on the domestic developments that took place within each individual nation." (Media Development, issue 1998-1)
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"This book brings together experts in economics, sociology, anthropology, the humanities, and communications to explore what effects the North American Free Trade Agreement will have on the flow of cultural products among Mexico, the United States, and Canada. After an overview of free trade and the
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cultural industries, the book covers the following topics: dominance and resistance, cultural trade and identity in relation to Mexico and to French Canada, and intellectual property rights. Based on present trends, the contributors predict that there will be a steadily increasing flow of cultural products from the United States to its neighbors. This book grew out of a 1994 conference that brought together leaders of the cultural industries, policy makers, and scholars. It represents state-of-the-art thinking about the global influence of U.S. cultural industries." (Publisher description)
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