"This book interrogates the possibilities of global thinking from the south in the field of media, communication, and cultural studies. Through lenses of millennial media cultures, it refocuses the praxis of the global south in relation to the established ideas of globalization, development, and con
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ditions of postcoloniality. Bringing together original empirical work from media scholars from across the global south, the volume highlights how contemporary thinking about the region as theoretical framework - an emerging area of theory in its own right - is incomplete without due consideration being placed on narrative forms, both analogue and digital, traditional and sub-cultural. From news to music cultures, from journalism to visual culture, from screen forms to culture-jamming, the chapters in the volume explore contemporary popular forms of communication as manifested in diverse global south contexts." (Publisher description)
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"This exploratory study introduces a human security framework to examine the challenges that journalists face from daily professional and societal constraints and pressures when attempting to fulfill their role to inform the public in areas of conflict. The research focuses on the influences on Pale
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stinian journalists in one of the most challenging regions in the world for independently reporting the news. Our framework includes seven dimensions of human security: personal, organizational, community/societal, economic, political, geographic, and infrastructural. Our study found that the Palestinian media are military targets, and journalists face direct and indirect censorship by the Israeli government as well as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Although we have adapted this framework for the Palestinian case in particular, the spheres of these influences on human security would likely pertain to other insecure situations for journalists. Applying this framework to journalism studies could open new avenues of academic discovery to analyze human security beyond violence, safety, and risk. Our main contribution, we suggest, is building out a human security framework for academic journalism studies in contested, conflict-prone, and post-conflict areas around the world." (Abstract)
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"Roots of the New Arab Film deals with the generation of filmmakers from across North Africa and the Middle East who created an international awareness of Arab film from the mid-1980s onwards. These seminal filmmakers experienced the moment of national independence first-hand in their youth and reta
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ined a deep attachment to their homeland. Although these aspiring filmmakers had to seek their training abroad, they witnessed a time of filmic revival in Europe - Fellini and Antonioni in Italy, the French New Wave, and British Free Cinema. Returning home, these filmmakers brought a unique insider/outsider perspective to bear on local developments in society since independence, including the divide between urban and rural communities, the continuing power of traditional values and the status of women in a changing society. As they made their first films back home, the feelings of participation in a worldwide movement of new, independent filmmaking was palpable." (Publisher description)
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"The results of the questionnaire showed that most Palestinian organizations do think about and deal with media work in general. Since ninety-three percent of the organizations surveyed were already dealing with media, while 58% employed at least one person in a specialist position. Only 32% had a s
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pecialized department dedicated to media work. In terms of a specific strategic approach to media, 61% of the organizations who took part in the questionnaire had a strategic plan for dealing with media; 51% had an annual work plan. However, only 42% stated that they allocated an annual budget for media. In other words, they used funds which are not deducted from project grants. Turning to social media usage, we found that 70% of the organizations tried to finance content through their networks at least once, whereas fifty-four percent of the organizations launched digital awareness campaigns on social media platforms; forty-nine percent of these digital campaigns were part of a media plan. Looking at the prevalence of social media platforms and how they are most widely used, we found that all organizations, even the ones with no website, usually had a Facebook account. In fact, 100% of the organizations surveyed had a Facebook account, hence this was not subject to testing in relation to the other influencing factors. YouTube followed with 75% of the organizations having an account. Fifty-one percent of the organizations had a Twitter account, while 27% had an Instagram account and 18% had a LinkedIn account. Two of the organizations used Soundcloud and two others used Flickr. Vimeo and Google+ were only used by a single organization for each one." (Results and conclsions, page 56-7)
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"This Is Not an Atlas gathers more than 40 counter-cartographies from all over the world. This collection shows how maps are created and transformed as a part of political struggle, for critical research or in art and education: from indigenous territories in the Amazon to the anti-eviction movement
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in San Francisco; from defending commons in Mexico to mapping refugee camps with balloons in Lebanon; from slums in Nairobi to squats in Berlin; from supporting communities in the Philippines to reporting sexual harassment in Cairo. This Is Not an Atlas seeks to inspire, to document the underrepresented, and to be a useful companion when becoming a counter-cartographer yourself." (Publisher description)
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"This book explores the complex and contradictory relationships between communication and information technologies and social movements by drawing on different case studies from around the world. The contributions analyse how new communication and information technologies impact the way protests are
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carried out and controlled in the current information age. The authors focus on recent events that date from the Arab Spring onwards and pose questions regarding the future of protests, surveillance and digital landscapes." (Publisher description)
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"In times of increasing mediatization and digitalization media play an important role in political and societal transformation processes. The authors of this volume take an actor-centered perspective to shed light on current cases in Arab and Asian countries. They inquire into the ways processes of
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networking and mobilization evolve in the context of restricted media systems and state-dominated public spheres." (Publisher description)
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"This report looks at media practices and regulatory tools that are available to address hate speech and racism in the media, with a focus on eight countries, namely Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia. The first part looks at regulatory approaches to addressing these pro
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blems. It, in turn, is broken down into two main sections, one looking at legal regimes, including systems of media regulation, and the second looking at self-regulatory practices in the media and how they deal with racist speech. The second part outlines international standards in this area and, based on these and the legal frameworks and experiences in the region, offers a set of recommendations for better practice directions in this area." (Executive summary, page 3)
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"The first part of the report provides a general introduction to the definition of digital rights and what they entail, and surveys key UN resolutions that recognise the impact of the internet on human rights. The second part of the report examines the accessibility of the internet by Palestinians a
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s a basic human right, taking into consideration their geographical, judicial and administrative fragmentation and how this affects their access to the internet and information and communications technologies (ICTs). The third part maps the recent restrictions and violations of Palestinians’ digital rights by three governments: the Israeli government, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the de-facto Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip. It also looks into practices and policies of private tech companies and their impact on Palestinian digital rights. The fourth part pays special attention to the issue of gender and the internet, examining in particular Palestinian women's use of the internet and the threats of cybercrime and gender-based violence online." (Introduction)
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"In spite of harsh censorship, conservative morals and a lack of investment, women documentarists in the Arab world have found ways to subtly negotiate dissidence in their films, something that is becoming more apparent since the ‘Arab Revolutions’. In this book, Stefanie Van de Peer traces the
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very beginnings of Arab women making documentaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt and Lebanon, to the 1990s and 2000s in Morocco and Syria." (Publisher description)
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"The book develops the analytics of grievability as an analytical framework that unpacks the ways in which news about death constructs grievable death and articulates relational ties between spectators and sufferers. The book employs the analytics of grievability in a comparative manner and analyses
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the coverage of three different case studies (terror attack, war and natural disaster) by two transnational news networks (BBC World News and Al-Jazeera English). This comparative analysis showcases the centrality of news media in selectively cultivating a sense of cosmopolitan solidarity in a global age." (Publisher description)
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"Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice examines the interplay between images and human rights, addressing how, when, and to what ends visuals are becoming a more central means through which human rights claims receive recognition and restitution. The collection argues that accounting for how imag
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es work on their own terms is an ever more important epistemological project for fostering the imaginative scope of human rights and its purchase on reality. Interdisciplinary in nature, this timely volume brings together voices of scholars and practitioners from around the world, making a valuable contribution to the study of media and human rights while tackling the growing role of visuals across cultural, social, political and legal structures." (Publisher description)
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"This article examines the work of women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on West Bank radio as they represent women, a marginalized community, within a patriarchal, traditional and religious society. It also examines the commercial and societal difficulties faced by radio stations in their
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interactions with NGOs. Using a quantitative and qualitative approach, this article analyses data from six commercial, rather than state-owned or community, radio stations in four West Bank cities and discusses the frustrations of both parties as they work together. Contributing to the limited literature on the role of radio in the West Bank, the article also draws on interviews with representatives from the chosen stations and the NGOs that broadcast material on radio stations. The findings suggest that, for the NGOs and in contrast to other media, radio plays an important, albeit currently limited, role as amplifiers for their campaigns. Yet the radio stations do not contribute substantively, if at all, to encouraging NGO community-building activities and, in fact, restrict themselves to a commercial-based association." (Abstract)
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"International development stakeholders harness communication with two broad purposes: to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicate do-gooding, via public relations and information. This book unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are com
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bined with attempts to look good, be it in the eyes of donor constituencies at large, or among more specific audiences, such as journalists or intra-agency decision-makers. Development communication studies have tended to focus primarily on interventions aimed at doing good among recipients, at the expense of examining the extent to which promotion and reputation management are elements of those practices. This book establishes the importance of interrogating the tensions generated by overlapping uses of communication to do good and to look good within international development cooperation." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter examined compassion as a news value in the humanitarian coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza by French and UK broadcasters to show the extent to which victims of foreign conflict can be portrayed with greater and lesser degrees of compassion … The study demonstrates that compassion as a
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news value is highly contextual, and in some cases was found to be insufficient as a dominant news characteristic. Coverage displayed other dominant news values such as negativity, violence and graphic imagery of the dead and wounded, and the elite value of world leaders. It confirmed that a hierarchy of victims can be identified in coverage of humanitarian suffering. For example, coverage by 20 Heures of related protests in Paris revealed that domestic victims may quickly displace remote others because of their cultural and geographical proximity. News at Ten provided a predominantly humanitarian coverage with direct interaction with victims while 20 Heures preferred less emotive and more one-dimensional coverage supported throughout with analytical, factual information. The findings not only provided insight into compassion as a news value but also shed light on it as an emotion among the warring parties, demonstrating the difficulty, if not impossibility, of displaying compassion for the enemy, regardless of their state of suffering." (Conclusion)
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"Remembering the Holocaust is a central part of historical awareness and political culture in reunified Germany, Israel, and the United States. But can the same be said for other parts of the world? How have societies that were not affected by occupation and extermination measures under the Nazi reg
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ime dealt with the legacy of the Holocaust? How have minorities with their own experiences of persecution reacted to specific acts of remembrance? How does demographic change affect memory? In what ways have immigrants come to terms with the central significance of the Holocaust? From a global perspective and in different national and regional contexts, international experts analyse the worldwide transformation of Holocaust remembrance. The fourteen case studies focus on the genesis and functions of remembrance in Europe, North and South America, Israel, North Africa, South Africa and Asia. The volume identifies and discusses contradictions and challenges in a process often referred to as the ‘globalisation’ or ‘universalisation’ of Holocaust remembrance." (Publisher description)
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"This collection of essays explores the complicated relationship between the messengers bringing news of catastrophic upheaval and the recipients of that message. It concentrates on the journalists, photographers and film-makers, reflecting not only the motivations behind their work, but also the ps
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ychological consequences of witnessing extreme suffering. The audience interpret the news according to their circumstance, be it with anger sympathy or with compassion-fatigued indifference. The book explores that reaction, which is always more nuanced than anticipated. Finally, the modern communication circle is completed by exploring the potential of the media to diminish conflict. This is demonstrated by the media bringing together communities that are either geographically or historically divided." (Publisher description)
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"Journalists from 17 countries, mostly around the Mediterranean, have examined the quality of media coverage within their respective national contexts. They highlight examples of good work marked by careful, sensitive and humanitarian reporting and also expose the shortcomings as well as the darker
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side of media driven by political bias, hate speech and opportunism. The conclusions from many different parts of the Mediterranean are similar; there are inspirational examples of journalism at its best – stylish, resourceful, and painstaking – and equally powerful instances of media stereotyping and social exclusion. But everywhere the study paints a picture of journalists and journalism under pressure: of under-resourced media unable to provide the time and money needed to tell the story in context; of poorly trained journalists uninformed about the complex nature of the migration narrative; of newsrooms vulnerable to pressure and manipulation by voices of hate, whether from political elites or social networks. The influence of social media cannot be underestimated in an age when many, if not most, consumers get their information firstly from social networks and through their mobile devices. The publisher is more likely to be a major internet company, such as Facebook, which requires fresh thinking on how to promote core standards of journalism in covering migration on all platforms." (Executive summary)
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"Seventy one percent of Palestinian youth say that they are most interested in following local news and events, 14% are most interested in following regional and international news and events, while 15% don’t follow the news at all. New media platorms are utlized the most by youth in the case of a
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ll types of news and programmes they were asked about. Youth use new media the most when it comes to social programmes (60%), followed by sports programmes (57%) and economic programmes (55%). The highest use of TV corresponds to politcal programmes (42%), followed by sports programmes (38%). Radio is stll being followed, but at a much lower percentage, while print media is hardly being followed." (Key findings, page 9)
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