"Drawing on cases from revolutionary France to the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the international authors probe the nature and agency of local blasphemy accusations, the historical and legal framework in which they were expressed and the violence, both physical and symbolic, accompanying them. In doing
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so, the volume reveals how cultures of blasphemy, and related acts of heresy, apostasy and sacrilege, were a companion to or acted as a trigger for physical action but also a form of how violence was experienced. More generally, it shows the importance of religious sensibilities in modern society and the violent potential contained in criticism or ridicule of the sacred and secular alike." (Publisher description)
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"This collection engages with alternatives to mainstream radio systems, histories and concepts. It addresses the impacts and challenges that alternative, community and pirate radio represent." (Publisher description)
"This study explores how news channels from the Global South challenge western narratives by co-producing TV programmes. It focuses on Telesur (Venezuela) and its collaborations with RT (Russia), Al-Mayadeen (Lebanon) and CCTV/CGTN (China). By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this pap
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er examines the structure of these collaborations, the discursive construction of alternative narratives and their contribution to countering hegemonic discourses. The findings show that the efforts to construct counterhegemonic narratives are most evident in the co-productions with RT and Al-Mayadeen. Although the co-production with CGTN focusses on culture, it is nonetheless possible to identify the broadcasters’ distinct ideological agendas." (Abstract)
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"Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) researchers identified key pro-Putin accounts with two or more duplicates engaged in administering, moderating, and contributing to large public Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of members fawning over the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russia
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n military, and occasionally spreading Kremlin disinformation, all while generating millions of posts across the platform. This briefing note outlines the mechanics, narratives, and linkages of the pro-Putin power users — producing content at a high-rate day in and day out since the start of the invasion — on Facebook to pro-Kremlin groups and pages, painting a picture of a coordinated, seemingly inauthentic campaign intended to buttress the image of Putin in a range of languages and geographies. While research is still ongoing, ISD has identified emerging linkages between this network and the Kremlin media apparatus, which provides much of the content used. Pro-Putin support has long been a staple of several pages, groups, and networks on Facebook. The role of what appear to be inauthentic networks, however, has been under-reported outside of election cycles. This briefing note highlights a different reality, where disparate yet connected micro-networks of duplicate pro-Putin power users are always active, evading moderation and detection for years." (About this publication)
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"This thematic issue asks about the role of religions and religious actors and conspiracy theories/theorists in democratic and authoritarian regimes in general. Special attention is given to the current Covid]19 pandemic, since the relevant state of emergency obviously endorses the persuasiveness
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of conspiracy theories and makes the comparison with religions necessary. In this respect, the challenges religious prejudices and conspiracy myths imply could even shed light on the problem of whether democracy or authoritarianism is the best regime to fight the Coronavirus successfully. The articles at hand answer these issues from interdisciplinary areas, particularly from political science, soci ology, social psychology,and history." (Editorial, page 132)
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"Drawing on the author’s and other media trainers’ experiences over a 25-year period, this book provides important insights into tailoring training programs to specific regions and countries. Case studies describe training in radio and television management, broadcasting, and media sustainabilit
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y, and are contextualized against the cultural and historical backgrounds of each region." (Publisher description)
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"This book presents a new perspective on how Russia projects itself to the world. Distancing itself from familiar, agency-driven International Relations accounts that focus on what 'the Kremlin' is up to and why, it argues for the need to pay attention to deeper, trans-state processes over which the
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Kremlin exerts much less control. Especially important in this context is mediatization, defined as the process by which contemporary social and political practices adopt a media form and follow media-driven logics. In particular, the book emphasizes the logic of the feedback loop or 'recursion', showing how it drives multiple Russian performances of national belonging and nation projection in the digital era. It applies this theory to recent issues, events and scandals that have played out in international arenas ranging from television, through theatre, film, and performance art, to warfare." (Publisher description)
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"Public service media (PSM) are widely acknowledged as part of the variety of solutions to disinformation. The remit of PSM, formed around values of universality, equality, diversity, accuracy and quality, implies a responsibility to fight disinformation by producing fact-based news content and find
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ing anti-disinformation solutions. In this article, we introduce a framework for assessing how PSM organizations are able to counter disinformation in different contexts. Our normative framework provides a triangulation of contextual factors that determine the role of the PSM organization in the national environment, the activities carried out to fight disinformation and expert assessments of the potential of PSM to reduce the impact of disinformation. The framework is illustrated with analyses of PSM from the Czech Republic (CZE), Finland, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK)." (Abstract)
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"Polnische Juden stellten nicht nur die größte Gruppe unter den Opfern des Holocaust, in den 1930er Jahren hatte auch kein Land Europas mehr jüdische Einwohner und einen vielfältigeren jüdischen Printmarkt als Polen. Die Studie trägt zu einem Paradigmenwechsel bei, der diese Tatsachen stärker
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berücksichtigt, indem er den Blick von Ost nach West richtet und die polnischen Juden nicht länger als monolithischen Block passiver Opfer begreift, sondern als handelnde Subjekte, die den Antisemitismus, der sie bedrohte, aktiv bekämpften. Aufbauend auf einer Analyse der Berichterstattung der jiddischen Warschauer Tagespresse über Nationalsozialismus und Judenverfolgung legt sie die Netzwerke der jüdischen Zeitungsmacher frei und zeigt, wie diese sich trotz Zensur und Repression subversives Wissen aneigneten, es ihrem Publikum vermittelten und so die Vorstellungswelten polnischer Juden über Deutschland prägten sowie Protest- und Solidaritätsaktionen zugunsten der Verfolgten initiierten." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"This report is published quarterly and gives an overview of key communication, community engagement and accountability (CCEA) barriers and gaps across the Ukraine response, as well as recommendations for practitioners and responders to improve the use of CCEA for those affected by the crisis. Despi
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te the many CCEA-related activities happening on the ground, there are still critical gaps related to: information provision on priority topics; addressing language and translation concerns; two-way digital outreach; and CCE for marginalised groups and host communities. Many of these gaps could be addressed, and CCEA activities more effectively scaled, through a collaborative approach among international aid organisations and local media, CSOs, and diaspora- and refugee-led organisations, formal and informal." (Introduction, page 5 & Conclusion, page 21)
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"The aim of this volume is to interpret photography as a specific tool that reifies reality, subjectively frames it, and fits it into various political, ideological, commercial, scientific, and artistic contexts. Without reducing the entire argument to the binary of ‘photography and power’, the
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authors reveal the different modes of seeing that involve distinct cultural norms, social practices, power relations, levels of technology, and networks for circulating photography, and that determined the manner of its (re)use in constructing various images of Central Asia. The volume demonstrates that photography was the cornerstone of imperial media governance and discourse construction in colonial Turkestan of the tsarist and early Soviet periods. The various cases show the complex mechanisms by which images of Turkestan were created, remembered, or forgotten from the nineteenth until the twenty-first century." (Publisher description)
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"The aim of this article is to show to what extent alternative audio media can be built online, not only by amateurs but also as a combination of the energy and involvement of professional journalists and the community of listeners who are ready to support them [...] The podcast Raport o stanie swia
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ta and two Internet radio stations, Radio Nowy Swiat and Radio 357 from Poland, which are analysed in this article, were born in an act of protest against the negative changes in public service broadcasting, which became a propaganda tool. They are financed by listeners via the crowdfunding platform Patronite and do not broadcast advertising. A framework for analysing their functioning is devised using, in particular, theories of the public sphere and of alternative media. The study is based on content analysis of the call-in broadcasts disseminated for the first anniversary of the stations, Radio Nowy Swiat (April 16 and July 9, 2022) and Radio 357 (January 5, 2022). Pre-structured interviews with the patrons of Raport o stanie swiata are also used. Websites and social media accounts of these initiatives, as well as press coverage and data gathered by the National Broadcasting Council in relation to Polish Radio, are analysed as well. The research found that all three initiatives Raport o stanie swiata, Radio Nowy Swiat and Radio 357, despite being started by professionals, share some of the characteristics of alternative media and can significantly change the model of audio production, financing and consumption routines in Poland." (Abstract)
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"It all started at the ECREA 2021 Post Conference “Disinformation Studies: Perspectives to An Emerging Research Field”, which took place online, on September 10, 2021. The debate there quickly widened and was joined by other colleagues. The book that we bring you here is the result of part of th
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at debate, which does not end with this publication." (https://labcomca.ubi.pt)
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"Can religious messages be transmitted through the media? If so, how and why? Taking these questions as its starting point, and focusing on the relationship between media and religion, this book presents an analysis of the relationship between religion and the media. It explores the inherent qualiti
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es of media communication channels and codes and the ways in which they affect the dissemination of religious messages, as well as the arguments over religion used in public discourse. The book also presents a critical analysis of church media in Slovakia, and shows that although the media do have the capacity to convey religious messages, they can only do so in a superficial manner and thus do not represent a suitable instrument for mediating deep spiritual content or serving as a vehicle for evangelization. Another key finding here is that the differences between the basic argumentation structures of the religious and secular worlds are irreconcilable, meaning that conservatives and progressives can expect little more than a basic sense of tolerance and decency from each other." (Publisher description)
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"This 3rd edition maps the new world of Investigative Journalism, where technology and globalisation have connected and energized journalists, whistle-blowers and the latest players, with far-reaching consequences in politics and business worldwide. In this new edition, expert contributors demonstra
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te how crowdsourcing, big data, globalization of information and changes in media ownership and funding have escalated the impact of investigative journalists. The book includes case studies of investigative journalism from around the world including the exposure of EU corruption, destruction of the Malaysian environment, and investigations in China, Poland and Turkey. From Ibero-America to Nigeria, India to the Arab world, investigative journalists intensify their countries' evolution by inquisition and revelation. This new edition reveals how investigative journalism has gone digital and global." (Publisher description)
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"The paper examines ideological segregation among Ukrainian users in online environments, using as a case study partisan news communities on Vkontakte, the largest online platform in post-communist states. Its findings suggest that despite their insignificant numbers, partisan news communities attra
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ct substantial attention from Ukrainian users and can encourage the formation of isolated ideological cliques – or ‘echo chambers’ – that increase societal polarisation. The paper also investigates factors that predict users’ interest in partisan content and establishes that the region of residence is the key predictor of selective consumption of pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian partisan news content." (Abstract)
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"This case study examines two websites and two blogging accounts which appear to be linked to News Front, a Crimean-based news organisation previously accused of being a source of pro-Kremlin disinformation and influence operations. The sites and accounts shared stories and images in many cases iden
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tical to those published by News Front without attribution. While the impact of the site’s activity is low, the case study provides a glimpse into the inner workings of the broader disinformation ecosystem, highlighting how particular pieces of content and narratives linked to pro-Kremlin influence can spread across the internet using multiple domains. More broadly, it sheds light on the long tail of state-linked online assets. The report shows how disinformation purveyors can use tactics like domain cloaking to avoid platform removals, suggesting a need for renewed thinking about effective forms of policy response for complex disinformation networks." (Publisher description)
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