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Civic Engagement, Civil Society, Protest Movements

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Innovative Arab Media and the New Outlines of Citizenship: A Collaborative Vision Builds Stronger Journalism Across the Region

Lina Attalah

New York: Century Foundation (2019), 15 pp.

"In this report, I have provided a glimpse of the ways in which innovative media outlets act as political agents in their current contexts, through their expressed positions, their content, and the forms in which they publish. Further work is needed to more fully describe the editorial sensibilities ... more

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Brazil’s Digital Resistance Against Corruption

Shaazka Beyerle

Tokyo: Toda Peace Institute (2019), 13 pp.

"From 2008 to 2010, 3.6 million Brazilians took part in the “Ficha Limpa” movement to impact political corruption by ensuring that anyone who runs for office has a “clean record.” This case study on the combination of a grassroots social movement paired with the Avaaz global web movement’s ... more

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Social Media in Africa: An Emerging Force for Autocrats and Activists

Geoffrey York

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 415-430

"The most extreme damage inflicted by social media can be seen in South Sudan. As documented in the chapter by Theo Dolan, social media in South Sudan has contributed to hatred and conflict among ethnic groups. Many investigators, including UN investigators, have warned that South Sudan's social med ... ia are triggering violence against ethnic groups. Since the beginning of the civil war in late 2013, social media has fuelled waves of hate speech that have provoked deadly violence and ethnic conflict in South Sudan, including massacres and other atrocities. In that sense, social media has become a new variation of the "hate radio" phenomenon that flourished in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide … Social media is also emerging as a powerful way to harass and intimidate the opponents of a regime or a political party. In this sense, it adds another weapon to the arsenal of a powerful regime that already has multiple weapons at its disposal. A regime can mobilize its supporters to use social media in a targeted way against its foes, or it can use its financial resources to create a fake army of fictional users on social media. In either case, it is tilting the playing field against its enemies. A targeted attack through social media can be more effective than the telephone threats or messages often deployed in the past. The use of social media can be more intimidating because it belittles the targeted person in front of a much bigger audience. The presence of this audience means that the attack is more damaging, more difficult to ignore and has the potential to mobilize large numbers of people against the victim … While social media is often used for anti-democratic purposes in Africa's authoritarian states, it has also been used as a force for reform, accountability and justice. It has helped to safeguard the fairness of elections. It has allowed greater scrutiny of potential threats, such as vote-rigging or violence, allowing citizens to be alerted when there is still a chance to prevent the worst abuses. It has put a spotlight on corruption and political wrongdoing, allowing activists to mobilize pressure on governments to resolve these long-neglected problems. In some cases, as it did in the Arab Spring, social media has played a role in toppling an authoritarian state. When an election was called in the small West African state of Gambia, where the dictator Yahya Jammeh had ruled for 22 years, opposition candidates had little access to state-controlled media. So the main opposition party created more than a dozen WhatsApp groups, allowing it to communicate with voters. Other forms of social media also proliferated. A leading independent group, the Gambia Youth and Women's Forum, discussed election issues on a public Facebook group with 55,000 members. The government blocked access to WhatsApp and eventually extended the shutdown to the entire internet, but Gambians used virtual private network (VPN) technology to bypass the shutdown. The opposition won the election and Jammeh was forced to flee the country." (Pages 419-423) more

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Social Media Activism: Water as a Common Good

Matteo Cernison

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (2019), 241 pp.

"This book focuses on the referendums against water privatisation in Italy and explores how activists took to social media, ultimately convincing twenty-seven million citizens to vote. Investigating the relationship between social movements and internet-related activism during complex campaigns, thi ... more

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Silencing a Snakehead Fish: A Case Study in Local Media, Rural-Based Activism, and Defamation Litigation in Southern Myanmar

Jennifer Leehey

In: Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change

Lisa Brooten, Jane Madlyn McElhone, Gayathry Venkiteswaran (eds.)

Singapore: ISEAS (2019), pp. 151-176

"My focus in this chapter is on civil society mobilization in Tanintharyi Region in southern Myanmar, and particularly in Kanbauk, a village of about 1,500 households in the Tanintharyi Hills, eighty kilometres north of the regional capital, Dawei. In recent years, Kanbauk villagers have contended w ... more

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Online Activism in Latin America

Hilda Chacón (ed.)

New York; London: Routledge (2019), ix, 317 pp.

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Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Josepha Wessels

CyberOrient, volume 13, issue 1 (2019), pp. 4-27

"As an introduction to this special issue of CyberOrient, this text provides an insight into ongoing research in studies of digital layers of revolutions, digital communication, and dissidence in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Providing a short overview of the latest development ... more

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Listening at the Local Level: The Role of Radio in Building Community and Trust

Jocelyn Ellen Nettlefold

Media International Australia, volume 172, issue 1 (2019), pp. 74-88

"This article examines the role of local radio in the contemporary media environment, specifically as a site for community engagement. Previous research finds journalistic organisations, at the local level, are critical to the functioning of society and more needs to be understood about their contem ... more

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El reto de la democracia digital: Hacia una ciudadanía interconectada

Elaine Ford Deza

Lima: Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE); Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE); Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS); Democracia & Desarrollo Internacional (2019), 174 pp.

"Son cuatro los capítulos que acá se incluyen que reúnen teoría, conceptos, casos, iniciativas, datos, ejemplos y, por supuesto, reflexión y análisis. Los capítulos abarcan: 1. Definiciones sobre Democracia Digital. Se revisa de manera teórica, clara y concisa lo que es la Democracia Digital ... more

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The Playful Citizen: Civic Engagement in a Mediatized Culture

René Glas, Sybille Lammes, Michiel de Lange, Joost Raessens, Imar de Vries (eds.)

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (2019), 431 pp.

"From the Occupy movement to playful city-making to the gameful designs of the Obama 2008 and Trump 2016 presidential campaigns, and the rise of citizen science and ecological games, this book shows how play is a key theoretical, methodological, and practical principle for comprehending such new for ... more

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#SpeakUp: Using Social Media to Promote Police Accountability in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda

Romi Sigsworth

Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies (ISS) (2019), 38 pp.

"Social media engagement alone can achieve limited results in promoting public accountability for police misconduct in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda but can and has served as a valuable tool in this endeavour. The percentage of the population in Africa that engages in discussions on social media platfo ... more

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The Media and Participatory Governance in Ghana: Trends and Challenges

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) (2019), 15 pp.

"Drawing on available data and literature, this paper begins with an introduction on the media landscape in Ghana and explains how the media have contributed to promoting participatory and accountable governance. It further discusses the trends, barriers of media and governance in Ghana and makes ke ... more

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#meinung #macht #digital #plattformkapitalismus

ila, issue 426 (2019), pp. 4-40

"WhatsApp und Facebook werden auch in Lateinamerika massiv genutzt, vor allem aufgrund ihres vermeintlich kostenlosen Charakters. Auch dort wird das Problem der rechten Meinungsmache und der Fake News diskutiert, denn die Tatsache, dass sich die Leute heute vor allem über Werbeplattformen informier ... en, die unzutreffend „soziale Medien“ genannt werden, hat handfeste politische Auswirkungen. In Brasilien und El Salvador wurden die jüngsten Wahlen nicht über Präsenz und Debatten in den traditionellen Medien gewonnen, sondern über gut vorbereitete und teure WhatsApp-Kampagnen. In Brasilien siegt so der Rechtsextremist Jair Bolsonaro, in El Salvador der politische Wende-hals und PR-Profi Nayib Bukele. Die brasilianischen WhatsApp-Nutzer*innen wurden während des Wahlkampfs mit gefälschtem, häufig explizit sexuellem Inhalt geflutet, wie etwa der Meldung, dass die Arbeiterpartei plane, Babyfläschchen mit Nuckel in Penisform zu verteilen, um die Homosexualisierung der Kleinkinder voranzutreiben. Haarsträubendes postfaktisches Zeitalter – warum fallen Fake News auf fruchtbaren Boden? Klar ist: Klassische Medien haben ihre Funktion als „Gatekeeper“, als Instanzen, die sortieren und filtern, längst eingebüßt. Die Gesellschaften werden vielfältiger und unübersichtlicher: mehr Pluralität auf der einen Seite, andererseits immer tiefere Gräben, die sich durch die Gesellschaften ziehen. Die mediale Öffentlichkeit und die Zugangsbedingungen zu ihr wandeln sich. Die Menschen misstrauen „denen da oben“ durchaus zu Recht. Aber die kommerziellen Global Tech Player beherrschen die Räume für Kommunikation, Information und Meinungsbildung mit Algorithmen. Das hat Folgen. Das Geschäftsmodell basiert auf Datenschürfen, kombiniert mit persönlich zugeschnittener Werbung. Du bekommst das, was du sehen und hören willst, nicht was wahr ist und den Tatsachen entspricht. Und davon profitieren vor allem rechtspopulistische Akteure. Gibt es dazu einen funktionierenden linken Gegenentwurf? Wir, die Macher*innen der ila und ähnlich Gesinnte, wollten eigentlich schon immer zur Bildung einer Gegenöffentlichkeit beitragen, positionierten uns gegen den „bürgerlichen Journalismus als Stellvertreterjournalismus“, wollten „Betroffenenberichterstattung“. Heute haben Rechte und Rechtsextreme den Begriff „Gegenöffentlichkeit“ für sich gekapert. Und jetzt haben wir den Salat. Aktuell existiert eine Öffentlichkeit jenseits der Dichotomie „staatlich geregelt oder privat“. Wir haben kein Problem mehr damit, unsere eigenen Inhalte zu verbreiten und eigene Medien zu schaffen. Das stellt allerdings noch längst nicht sicher, dass wir auch gehört werden. Der springende Punkt ist nicht mehr der Zugang, sondern die Reichweite. Wir konkurrieren mit allen anderen Anbietern von welcher Information auch immer um Aufmerksamkeit. Und dabei verfügen wir, kaum anders als früher, immer noch über die schwächeren Möglichkeiten. Wie sieht also das Überleben im „Plattformkapitalismus“ aus, wie sich darin bewegen, schützen, informieren, seine Meinung bilden und als politisch Aktive oder alternative Medienschaffende die eigenen Inhalte verbreiten? Dazu ein paar Ideen, die sich aus der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema und lateinamerikanischen Gesprächspartner*innen herauskristallisieren: Versteht, die Technik zu verstehen (in Lateinamerika ist die Rede von hackear la tecnología, also die Technologie für die eigenen Zwecke zu nutzen wissen), wahrt eine kritische Distanz, haltet eure Informationsquellen vielfältig (was vor allem auch Kindern und Jugendlichen vermittelt werden sollte), schafft und nutzt alternative Plattformen. Manchmal kann auch digitales Fasten das Gebot der Stunde sein. Handy aus und raus auf die Straße – oder in den Wald." (Editorial) more

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The Other Digital China: Nonconfrontational Activism on the Social Web

Jing Wang

Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard University Press (2019), 312 pp.

"A scholar and activist tells the story of change makers operating within the Chinese Communist system, whose ideas of social action necessarily differ from those dominant in Western, liberal societies." (Publisher description)

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What Does Closing Civic Space Mean for Development? A Literature Review and Proposed Conceptual Framework

Naomi Hossain, Nalini Khurana, Shandana Mohamand et al.

Institute of Development Studies (2018), 51 pp.

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Appropriating Technology for Accountability: Messages from 'Making All Voices Count'

Rosie McGee, Duncan Edwards, Colin Anderson, Hannah Hudson, Francesca Feruglio

Brighton: Institute of Development Studies (IDS) (2018), 30 pp.

"The most important messages on the roles technologies can play in enabling citizen voice and accountable and responsive governance are: 1. Not all voices can be expressed via technologies. 2. Technologies can play decisive roles in improving services where the problem is a lack of planning data or ... more

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Comunicación para la resistencia: Conceptos, tensiones y estrategias en el campo político de los medios
Deep Insights

Florencia Saintout et al.

La Plata: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Social; Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES); CLACSO (2018), 361 pp.

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Content of Vernacular Radio Stations Programs and Public Participation in Devolved Governance in Nyeri County, Kenya

Dorcas Wakio Mwangi, Caroline Biwott, David Gichuhi

Journal of Development and Communication Studies, volume 5, issue 2 (2018), pp. 70-81

"The study has concluded that there exists a positive relationship between vernacular radio programming content and participation of community in issues of governance. Therefore, it is recommended that vernacular radio stations should give more attention to the content of these programs. Priority sh ... more

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Action Steps: A Decade of Civil Society Advocacy in the Information Society. A Baseline Review of the Global Information Society Watch Country Reports (2007-2017)

Alan Finlay

Association for Progressive Communications (APC); International Development Research Centre (IDRC) (2018), 80 pp.

"This review looks back over 11 years of civil society advocacy in the information society – a total of 510 country reports published in Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) from 2007 to 2017. It covers a period of important global shifts, from the exponential growth and influence of social ... more

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Human Rights, Social Movements and Activism in Contemporary Latin American Cinema

Mariana Cunha, Antônio Márcio da Silva (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), xi, 265 pp.

"[This book] reflects on the extent to which films can play an active role in denouncing human rights abuses and exposing the struggle for visibility of different social movements and minorities. This collection explores Latin American cinema’s representations of human rights violators and oppress ... more

Comunicación para la resistencia: Conceptos, tensiones y estrategias en el campo político de los medios Deep Insights

Comunicación para la resistencia: Conceptos, tensiones y estrategias en el campo político de los medios
Deep Insights