"This publication is a collection of a variety of outlooks, recommendations, and input from the participants of the 2020 workshop [for fellows of the CrossCulture Programme (CCP) of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen] and others. On the subject of digital access, CCP alumnus Camilo Olea speaks ab
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out the digital divide in Mexico and how his organisation is providing access to indigenous rural communities. The German NGO Superrr demands an open digital infrastructure and more open-source software for a more inclusive digital sphere. Ali (name changed), a Bangladeshi journalist and CCP alumnus, gives an overview of the current state of free speech in Bangladesh. CCP alumna Hend Kheiralla from Sudan shares her view on the role of social media during the Sudanese Revolution and the impact of the internet shutdown. Having experienced severe discrimination online herself, a CCP alumna from Jordan talks about her experiences and the impact of attacks as well as strategies for dealing with them. Love Storm, a German NGO that focuses on countering hatred online, suggests specific measures we can start using directly to create a safe and inclusive online space for everyone." (Editorial, page 3)
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"Este volumen tiene como objetivo crear un espacio transdisciplinario y abrir un diálogo crítico en torno a las posibilidades de la representación del subalterno en la edición cartonera. El fenómeno de las editoriales cartoneras surge en el contexto de la poscrisis en Argentina, cuando un grupo
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de artistas decide producir libros por su propia cuenta, con tapas de cartón reciclado, involucrar a los cartoneros —personas que colectan cartón en las calles para venderlo—, y así dar vida al proyecto “Eloísa Cartonera”. Este modelo de editorial alternativa y artesanal proliferó de manera impresionante en América Latina y fue incluso asociado —desde la academia— con una democratización y desjerarquización cultural. En un formato híbrido que reúne tanto contribuciones académicas como testimonios directos de los editores de cartoneras, esta colección invita a conocer a algunos de estos proyectos y reflexionar sobre su papel en el discurso dominante de la academia." (Editorial)
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"With attacks against storytellers increasing year-on-year, concern has grown about the lack of safety and security resources available to them. This is the focus of our study. Through a series of 120 interviews with artists, filmmakers, journalists, funders, activists, academics and others, along w
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ith desk research, we have sought to identify how storytellers can be better resourced to continue to confront and speak truth to power. The study is global in its overview, with a spotlight on Central and South America where in-depth research and interviews were conducted." (Abstract)
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"The book brings together scholars from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia, reporting findings based on data collected from democratic, transitional, and non-democratic contexts to produce thematic chapters that address how journalistic cultures vary around the globe,
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specifically in relation to challenges that journalists face in performing their journalistic roles. The study measures, compares, and analyzes the materialization of the interventionist, the watchdog, the loyal-facilitator, the service, the infotainment, and the civic roles in more than 30,000 print news stories from 18 countries. It also draws from hundreds of surveys with journalists to explain the link between ideals and practices, and the conditions that shape this divide." (Publisher description)
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"The eight articles in the publication can be broadly grouped into two main sets. The first set discusses the different types of digital skills required from a more academic perspective, in particular in the context of the pandemic and post-pandemic period, as countries accelerate their move towards
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the digital transition. It also features an article that looks at a specific development sector – humanitarian assistance – and demonstrates how digital skills training can help communities affected by crisis. The second set of articles presents concrete examples, from countries in different regions, of digital skills initiatives, policies and programmes; and provides insights on lessons learned and recommendations on the way forward." (Page 4)
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"This report provides an overview of the comparative innovation capacity of the Americas region through ICT-centric innovation policy monitors and insights on how good practice can strengthen capacity to integrate ICT innovation into national development agendas.
Overall, the Americas region has sho
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wn divergent scenarios in reaching the full potential of the innovation ecosystem. Few countries have a traditionally strong innovation system, and most performances in one or all three engines of growth must improve for the region to become a real actor on the global stage. Canada and the United States of America perform well, while emerging economies such as Argentina, Brazil or Mexico are struggling on the technological, entrepreneurial or innovation ecosystems, and others such as Haiti need further support to turn the country into a thriving digital innovation ecosystem.
To understand these discrepancies, the report introduces two ICT centric innovation monitors: the three engines of growth monitor and the digital transformation enablers monitor.
The report notes that there are many good practices in the region fuelling the entrepreneurial journey. Each practice presented in the report was analysed based on its impact in a third ICT-centric innovation policy monitor, the ecosystem maturity map monitor. Each stakeholder group, at each of the five stages of the entrepreneurial journey, is assessed by its level of engagement to assess the maturity of the ecosystem. For example, the first stage of the journey for entrepreneurs is entrepreneurial interest, while for the public sector, it is having a vision and strategy. The monitor enables stakeholders to visualize the maturity of the ICT-centric innovation ecosystem and identify which practices to keep, which must be improved and which to replace." (Introduction)
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"There is a growing recognition that journalists are exposed to dangerous or hazardous working conditions in many places worldwide. These conditions are suggested to be linked to greater macro-related structural risks, including changes to the political economy of news that increase labor precarity,
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cultural and identity-based risks from oppressive normative systems, aggressive partisans and extremists, and risks originating from weak or changing enforcement of the rule of law that increases journalists' vulnerability to corrupt officials, security forces and criminal groups. While previous research has linked these structural risks to acts of workplace victimization of journalists, it has not considered how structural risks are connected to the subjective experience of victimization, which includes emotional upheaval and varying coping strategies. Anchoring this study in the sociology of risk literature with general strain theory, this study considers how greater, macro-level structures are tied to journalist’s victimization, emotions and coping using open and closed survey response data from 21 Mexican and 33 Brazilian journalists. Survey data was collected through matched subnational context designs and snowball sampling strategies. Findings show that journalists recalled victimization experiences that were linked to labor market and workplace risks, risks associated with the rule of law, culturally based risks, and identity-based risks. As a result, journalists engaged in short and long-term coping strategies. Coping strategies were also either individualistic or collectivist in nature, with coping strategies ultimately being influenced by country and regional contexts." (Abstract)
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"Since 2000, more than 150 journalists have been killed in Mexico. Today the country is one of the most dangerous in the world in which to be a reporter. In Surviving Mexico, Celeste González de Bustamante and Jeannine E. Relly examine the networks of political power, business interests, and organi
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zed crime that threaten and attack Mexican journalists, who forge ahead despite the risks. Amid the crackdown on drug cartels, overall violence in Mexico has increased, and journalists covering the conflict have grown more vulnerable. But it is not just criminal groups that want reporters out of the way. Government forces also attack journalists in order to shield corrupt authorities and the very criminals they are supposed to be fighting. Meanwhile some news organizations, enriched by their ties to corrupt government officials and criminal groups, fail to support their employees. In some cases, journalists must wait for a “green light” to publish not from their editors but from organized crime groups. Despite seemingly insurmountable constraints, journalists have turned to one another and to their communities to resist pressures and create their own networks of resilience. Drawing on a decade of rigorous research in Mexico, González de Bustamante and Relly explain how journalists have become their own activists and how they hold those in power accountable." (Publisher description)
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"This article explores the uses of sources in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in social media posts of mainstream news organizations in Brazil, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. Based on computational content analysis, our study analyzes the sources and actors present in more t
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han 940,000 posts on COVID-19 published in the 227 Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts of 78 sampled news outlets between January 1 and December 31 of 2020, comparing their relative importance across countries, across media platforms, and across time as the pandemic evolved in each country. The analysis shows the dominance of political sources across countries and platforms, particularly in Latin America, demonstrating a strong role of the state in constructing pandemic news and suggesting that mainstream news organizations' social media posts maintain a strong elite orientation. Health sources were also prominent — consistent with the defining role of biomedical authority in health coverage—, while significant diversity of sources, including citizen sources, emerged as the pandemic went on. Our results also revealed that the use of specific sources significantly varied over time. These variations tend to go hand in hand with specific global milestones of the pandemic." (Abstract)
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"Definitions of impunity regarding crimes against journalists have thus far been too narrow. Therefore, we propose a new approach to understanding impunity as also being grounded in journalists’ lived reality and perceptions to better understand the complexity and breadth of impunity. It is based
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on the findings obtained through a set of semi-structured interviews with 40 editors and senior journalists in five countries and expressed in a new typology of impunity. We argue that what we call the ‘Politics of Impunity’ is a policy of governance whereby impunity is used as a political tool by the state and state-sponsored actors to achieve journalistic self-censorship. This is done through the deliberate deprivation of private autonomy brought about by the enforced exile of journalists into a ‘space of exception’ where they are both within and beyond the law. The exercise of the ‘Politics of Impunity’ in an increasing number of states creates an environment that only allows for politically compliant journalism." (Abstract)
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"This study investigates a battle over music and identity at Radio Zapotitlán, a community radio station in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. An analysis of over 20 interviews with station organizers, volunteers and listeners conducted in 2009 and 2010 indicates that while organizers and older listener
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s celebrated Ranchera music as the station’s predominant musical content, younger listeners fought to broadcast contemporary Banda music. An historical and theoretical analysis of Ranchera music explores its cultural role in mediating experiences of migration and nostalgia. This study finds that Radio Zapotitlán organizers promoted Ranchera music in order to engage the national and transnational nostalgia of Zapotitlán’s displaced migrants, and to meet the expectations of government regulators and transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It concludes that local, regional, national and transnational interests cannot be disentangled in musical articulations of identity at Radio Zapotitlán." (Abstract)
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"As a consequence of the endemic anti-press violence, Mexican journalists work under dangerous conditions. The constant assaults have eroded the practice of free journalism and thus, the people's right to know. Drawing on a set of semi-structured interviews with news workers from the most violent st
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ates across the country, this study emphasises that this phenomenon has a threefold impact at the individual, organisational, and societal levels. That is, those attacks affect the victims, the newsrooms they work for, and society. The findings also point that journalists throughout the nation share similar perceptions regarding these implications, because there is a generalised risk that they have to constantly face." (Abstract)
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"Pensar la relevancia de la televisión hoy significa abordar los desafíos democráticos que ella enfrenta respecto a las coyunturas políticas, el contexto de convergencia mediática, el papel de los medios públicos y los procesos de innovación y ruptura en la ficción y en los géneros informat
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ivos. Todo esto en contextos complejos de polarización política, agudas crisis sociales y presiones a favor del replanteamiento del modelo neoliberal y de sus exclusiones e inequidades. En Los desafíos a las televisiones en América Latina dieciséis especialistas de distintos países del continente estudian el panorama actual y algunos procesos y experiencias en Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia y México. Este libro busca estimular el debate y el desarrollo de estudios críticos sobre la televisión y el ecosistema mediático en su relación con las culturas políticas, las políticas públicas y la in-novación en temas, narrativas y formatos, asumiendo los retos como oportunidades de cambios de rumbo y creación de nuevos derroteros para la producción, circulación y recepción crítica del medio televisivo." (Cubierta del libro)
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"This book explores the relationship between the safety of journalists and self-censorship practices around the world, including local case studies and regional and international perspectives. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the globe, Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship p
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rovides new and updated insights into patterns of self-censorship and free speech, focusing on a variety of factors that affect these issues, including surveillance, legislation, threats, violent conflict, gender-related stereotypes, digitisation and social media. The contributions examine topics such as trauma, risk and self-censorship among journalists in different regions of the world, including Central America, Estonia, Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan. The book also provides conceptual clarity to the notion of journalist self-censorship, and explores the question of how self-censorship may be studied empirically." (Publisher description)
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"This article focuses on international news channels in the Global South and the perceptions by audiences in Latin America. Designed with the intention of re-shaping global narratives, international broadcasting is considered instrumental to public diplomacy and improving the image of particular cou
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ntries. While many studies focus on global media policies of specific countries or the messages broadcast by international media outlets, less attention has been paid to the impact on audiences. Based on a series of focus groups conducted in Mexico and Argentina, this article discusses how Latin American audiences perceive public diplomacy efforts as channelled by international news media and their effect on country image perception, by focusing on China’s CCTV-E, Russia’s RT and Iran’s HispanTV. The findings show that preconceived images contribute to undermine the acceptance of international broadcasters. In addition, participants were optimistic about RT’s prospects of success in Latin America, hesitant about HispanTV and pessimistic about China Central Television." (Abstract)
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"Through carefully curated essays, Salazkina and Fibla-Gutiérrez bring wider meaning and significance to the discipline through their study of alternative cinema in new territories, fueled by different historical and political circumstances, innovative technologies, and ambitious practitioners. The
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essays in this volume work to realize the radical societal democratization that shows up in amateur cinema around the world. In particular, diverse contributors highlight the significance of amateur filmmaking, the exhibition of amateur films, the uses and availability of film technologies, and the inventive and creative approaches of filmmakers and advocates of amateur film." (Publisher description)
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"El Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, desde su Oficina Regional para América del Sur, en conjunto con OBSERVACOM, una organización no gubernamental regional con sede en Montevideo, presentan este trabajo con un objetivo muy sencillo: recapitular los trabajos que se hicieron en relació
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n con el ejercicio de la libertad de expresión a través de los medios comunitarios en los últimos casi 20 años. Se trata de una recopilación oportuna: desde que por primera vez en 2002 la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos a través de su Relatoría Especial para la Libertad de Expresión se ocupara de esta cuestión en un informe temático hace ya casi 20 años, nos encontramos en este 2021 con la oportunidad histórica que la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos emita una sentencia en un caso concreto, que es el primero enviado por la Comisión sobre esta temática a la Corte. En este trabajo se recopilan entonces no sólo distintas piezas del sistema interamericano de protección de derechos humanos que han venido destacando la importancia que adquieren los medios de comunicación comunitarios para el ejercicio de la libertad de expresión, sino que además se agregan unos trabajo realizados en el marco de la UNESCO y otros que provienen de la sociedad civil, que, a lo largo de estos años, ha venido manteniendo el tema en la agenda de las discusiones sobre las reformas aún hoy vigentes, sobre legislación de comunicación audiovisual." (Prólogo)
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"El análisis de la información disponible sobre ocho indicadores de concentración en Internet en México muestra que en casi todas ellas unas pocas empresas tienen una posición dominante en el mercado o servicio relevado: 1. Acceso a Internet fija: Con un índice CR4 de 98.7%, en México se obse
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rva un mercado oligopólico consolidado de cuatro empresas mexicanas: América Móvil, Grupo Televisa (24.8%), Megacable (15.9) y Total Play (9.6%). 2. Acceso Internet móvil: El sector de Internet móvil es un mercado consolidado en sólo tres empresas (CR3 97.5%). Dos son extranjeras: el gigante estadounidense AT&T y la empresa española Telefónica/Movistar, pero la mexicana América Móvil supera el 70% del mercado [...]" (Conclusiones, página 18)
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"This article contributes to the scholarship on Latin American campaigning by presenting data on the use of social media by presidential candidates in Guatemala’s 2019 election, including a content analysis of more than 2,000 Facebook posts along fifteen variables. The data show that Facebook use
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by presidential campaigns is ubiquitous and allows campaigns to disseminate messages in non-traditional formats. Candidates use their Facebook accounts to mention issues of concern to voters and to make promises to fix the country’s problems, but offer far more slogans and vague promises than detailed policy proposals. They also rarely attack other candidates or tout their own qualifications for the presidency. The data also reveal systematic differences in campaign messaging between frontrunner and long-shot candidates." (Abstract)
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