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Digital Inclusion: International Policy and Research

Simeon Yates, Elinor Carmi (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2024), xix, 277 pp.

"With a special focus on the impact of the COVID-19, the collection is based on the 2021 Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference, with chapters from both academia and civic organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed citizens' relationship with digital technologies for the foreseeable ... more

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What Explains the Spread of Misinformation in Online Personal Messaging Networks? Exploring the Role of Conflict Avoidance

Andrew Chadwick, Cristian Vaccari, Nathalie-Anne Hall

Digital Journalism, volume 12, issue 5 (2024), pp. 574-593

"Online personal messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are now hugely popular around the world. Yet their role in the spread and social correction of misinformation remains under-researched. We carried out in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the UK public (N = 102) to exp ... more

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The Routledge companion to freedom of expression and censorship

John Steel, Julian Petley (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2024), xvi, 420 pp.

"This volume addresses the various historical, philosophical, political and cultural parameters of censorship and freedom of expression as well as current debates involving technology, journalism and media regulation. Geographically, temporally and culturally diverse accounts of censorship and freed ... more

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Eyewitness Textures: User-Generated Content and Journalism in the Twenty-First Century

Michael Lithgow, Michèle Martin

Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press (2024), 365 pp.

"News consumers have come to expect and demand the unprecedented immediacy of experience and coverage of breaking news offered by photographs, video clips, audio recordings, tweets, commentary: content created by ordinary citizens. The use of user-generated content is a salient aspect of how journal ... more

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Real or fake? Teenagers managing life on screens. The cybersurvey 2023

Adrienne Katz, Aiman El Asam

Youthworks (2023), 43 pp.

"Teens remain enthusiastic about life online: 87% go digital to manage or calm emotions. They relax, chat with friends, listen to music, or find out what they want to know. Most importantly for them, they connect with friends. They also use it to fend off boredom (which ‘can let in anxiety’). Ov ... er 2/3 say, it is ‘my main entertainment’. Around half go online to ‘escape my issues’. 47% feel more accepted when online, while three quarters feel more confident when on a screen. Digital access: 85% have their own phone with wi-fi access. 68% of 11yr olds, 89% of 13 olds and 97% of 15 year olds have their own phone with wi-fi access. The impacts of life on screens: While this is hotly debated amongst adults, here teenagers talk about how time on screens makes them feel. Responses are grouped into four parts: A) Benefits include: ‘feeling closer to my friends through social media 81%, or via gaming, 69%. Three quarters or 75% feel more confident when on a screen. They value creativity, the privacy and autonomy of finding out whatever they want, and the ability to ‘escape my issues’ or access entertainment and relaxation. B) ‘Electronic mood management’ explores how large numbers of teens use technology to manage their emotions. Contrary to popular myths, 80% hardly ever/never feel anxious after spending time on social media. 6% often feel anxious. C) 'Body mage and perception of others’ play a large role in online life: Almost 1 in 4 always or often believe that ‘Other people have a better life than me,’ Almost 1 in 5 say ‘Because of what I see online I’ve often tried to change my body shape’. D) Acceptance: Some feel it is easier to be accepted online or to ‘find people like me’. This is particularly true for young people who are unsure where they fit in, or those with a disability. Accessibility tools are widely used. Identifying who is most at risk: The survey also explores those who are more likely to describe negative impacts such as teens with an eating disorder, or a mental health difficulty; those who worry about life at home, and those with vision or hearing loss, speech difficulties, young carers, children in care and those with other challenges. The findings in this survey remain consistent with our published research. This minority are less safe online then their peers, they are more likely to become anxious or depressed after time online (or offline) and need help to manage their online lives. Alongside experiencing problems and harms online, they tend to be living with offline difficulties, and emotional health concerns. Some report multiple vulnerabilities. For those living with challenges, and dealing with powerful emotions, or without the means to go out for entertainment, the internet plays a different role. It can represent both a refuge and a risk. Being deprived of it can cause deep distress. Belonging and trust, or feeling left out: Boys are more likely to feel a sense of belonging and trust at school, whereas only 1/3 of girls say ‘school is a place where I feel I belong’ and ‘there is an adult I trust at school’. Teens need to feel they can turn to parents or trusted adults if they need to, and that they belong to and are valued in a community and also among friends. Compared to teens who never feel left out, those who do, described more anxiety, were less able to recover when things went wrong online, and were more likely to add unknown people as friends." (Executive summary, pages 4-6) more

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Conspiracy theories in the time of COVID-19

Clare Birchall, Peter Knight

London; New York: Routledge (2023), x, 237 pp.

"Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 provides a wide-ranging analysis of the emergence and development of conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on the US and the UK. The book combines digital methods analysis of large datasets assembled from social media with politic ... more

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“Fair and Balanced”: What News Audiences in Four Countries Mean When They Say They Prefer Impartial News

Camila Mont 'Alverne, Sumitra Badrinathan, Amy Ross Arguedas, Benjamin Toffet al.

Journalism Studies, volume 24, issue 9 (2023), pp. 1131-1148

"Impartial news, or news without a partisan slant or overt point-ofview, is overwhelmingly preferred by news audiences worldwide, yet what such preferences mean remains poorly understood. In this study, we examine what people mean when they say they prefer impartial news. We draw on qualitative inte ... more

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Global Issue, Global Coverage? How climate change is reported in African countries and countries in the Global North with regard to national issues and international relations

Merle Elisabeth van Berkum

London: City University of London, Doctoral Thesis (2023), 246 pp.

"This research investigates how the global challenge of climate change is portrayed in five African countries, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa, along with Germany, the UK, and the US. Several studies have investigated climate change reporting; this research adds to the literature by ... focusing on a comparative analysis of media coverage and including questions of historic responsibility and international relations [...] The overarching question guiding this research is: How do the different countries report climate change in comparison to each other, and with regard to international dynamics? From this, the project investigates three sets of more nuanced research questions diving deeper into the analysis of climate change reporting and the influence of structural or content-related issues on the reporting. The thesis draws on sociological approaches to journalism studies as well as postcolonial perspectives. It combines a quantitative content analysis of 1,348 news articles with 18 semi-structured interviews with environmental journalists to highlight the different viewpoints and experiences as a lens on global debates. The study finds that to a large extent climate change reporting demonstrates a strong national and sometimes even local focus, while covering an issue of global scale. Contradicting the familiar ‘Africa is a country’ trope, the research reveals the extent to which climate change reporting in Africa covers a global issue but is reported through a particular national lens of each country, led by the common news values of relevance and proximity. International (power) relations are mostly only reproduced indirectly through a conscious or unconscious focus on specific voices and regions. Additionally, the distinction between ‘active’ countries who contribute to the rising greenhouse gas emissions and ‘passive’ countries that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change is no longer a reflection of the media coverage. Instead, the simplified classification does not do justice to the complex world that we live in today. Overall, the thesis contributes to the emerging discussion of approaching climate journalism from a critical perspective and relating it to international (power) structures. This approach is not limited to the analysis of climate change reporting but can be applied to other issues, as well." (Abstract) more

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Questioning Fact-Checking in the Fight Against Disinformation: An Audience Perspective

Maria Kyriakidou, Stephen Cushion, Ceri Hughes, Marina Morani

Journalism Practice, volume 17, issue 10 (2023), pp. 2123-2139

"Fact-checking has been identified as a significant journalistic tool in the fight against disinformation. Relevant studies have focused on its emergence as a movement within journalism aiming at renewing the profession, as well as its effectiveness in challenging disinformation, especially during e ... more

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Communicative Justice in the Pluriverse: An International Dialogue

Joan Pedro-Carañana, Eliana Herrera-Huérfano, Juana Ochoa Almanza (eds.)

New York: Routledge (2023), xxiv, 176 pp.

"The book identifies and explains the unequal power relations in place that limit the possibilities of communication justice, the challenges and difficulties faced by activists and communities, the ways in which communities and movements have confronted power structures through discourse and materia ... more

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Media Wealth Building: The Report of the Local News Plans Project

Jonathan Heawood, Sameer Padania

Public Interest News Foundation; NewsNow (2023), 43 pp.

"Between September 2022 and January 2023, the Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) worked with local communities in Bangor, Bristol, Folkestone, Glasgow, Manchester and Newry, to create ‘Local News Plans’ for their areas. We facilitated discussions between local stakeholders, including news pr ... more

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Discourses, Modes, Media and Meaning in an Era of Pandemic: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach

Sabine Tan, Marissa K. L. E. (eds)

New York; London: Routledge (2023), xvi, 276 pp.

"Using a multimodal discourse analysis approach, this dynamic collection examines various discourses, modes and media in circulation during the early stages of the pandemic, and how these have impacted our daily lives in terms of the various meanings they express. Examples include how national and i ... more

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Representing Gender-Based Violence: Global Perspectives

Caroline Williamson Sinalo, Nicoletta Mandolini (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2023), xvii 314 pp.

"This book focuses on the politics, ethics and stereotypical pitfalls of representational practices surrounding Gender-Based Violence (GBV) from a global perspective. The originality of the volume is linked to its cross-disciplinary perspective as the topic of representing GBV is analyzed across the ... more

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Funding journalism using participatory grantmaking: A guide

Debs Grayson

Media Reform Coalition; Public Interest News Foundation (PINF); Institute of Welsh Affairs (2023), 55 pp.

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
Deep Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 167 pp.

"In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, acr ... oss all countries, in the last year. • News use across online platforms is fragmenting, with six networks now reaching at least 10% of our respondents, compared with just two a decade ago. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time. • Linked to these shifts, video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially with younger groups. Short news videos are accessed by two-thirds (66%) of our sample each week, with longer formats attracting around half (51%). The main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%), increasing the challenges around monetisation and connection. • Although the platform mix is shifting, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news – that’s down 10 percentage points on 2018. Publishers in a few Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are showing a weaker connection with news brands than they did in the past. • Turning to the sources that people pay most attention to when it comes to news on various platforms, we find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks such as Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role. • Concern about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news has risen by 3 percentage points in the last year with around six in ten (59%) saying they are concerned. The figure is considerably higher in South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%), both countries that have been holding elections this year. • Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content in online platforms is highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks. Both platforms have hosted misinformation or conspiracies around stories such as the war in Gaza, and the Princess of Wales’s health, as well as so-called ‘deep fake’ pictures and videos." (Executive summary, page 10) more

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Social media images and conflicts

Mette Mortensen, Ally McCrow-Young (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2023), xii, 137 pp.

"This collection considers how digital images and social media reconfigure the way conflicts are played out, represented and perceived around the globe. Devoted to developing original theoretical frameworks and empirical insights, the volume addresses the role of user images and social media in rela ... more

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Talking about poverty: Lessons learnt

York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF); Rights Evaluation Studio (2023), ii, 98 pp.

"The Talking about Poverty (TaP) project, which ran from 2016 to 2021, aimed to develop a more effective way of communicating about UK poverty through ‘framing’ – an evidence-based communications strategy. For this project, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) worked with the FrameWorks Instit ... ute, which is a not-for-profit communications research organisation based in the United States. In 2021, a sister organisation, FrameWorks UK, was established in the United Kingdom (UK), which focuses on supporting mission-driven organisations to apply strategic communications research in practice. The TaP project set out to understand the public’s attitudes to poverty in the UK and used insight from research with 20,000 people (Volmert et al, 2016) to develop ways to talk about poverty in a more effective way. To challenge the unhelpful narratives identified in the research, the project developed an evidence-based communications strategy (‘poverty framing’) to increase the public’s understanding of UK poverty and provide support for measures to address it. [...] There are some key development areas for future framing projects such as stronger project planning and management, monitoring and evaluation, and sustainability planning. However, the TaP project made PWLE who were engaged in the project feel more hopeful about the future and confident that the project would have a positive, accumulative effect on how poverty is being talked about in public discourse, with some indications that the project may have had some influence in the media and the House of Commons. The TaP project created a buzz in the third sector and was credited with helping to build a movement, leading to a more co-ordinated sector. While we identified a need and desire to engage the third sector and PWLE earlier on in the project, the vast majority of third sector partners and allies who were engaged in our evaluation both valued and used the framing in their work, crediting the framing with adding more dignity, positivity and effectiveness to their communications. The TaP project brought hundreds of organisations together for the Keep the Lifeline campaign and provided a robust and evidence-based communications strategy for their internal staff and external allies." (Executive summary, pages 3-6) more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 158 pp.

"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are ... showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators. • Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. • When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation. • Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected. • Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws. • Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10) more

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The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance

Stephen Boucher, Carina Antonia Hallin, Lex Paulson (eds.)

New York: Routledge (2023), xxx, 522 pp.

"The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance explores the concepts, methodologies, and implications of collective intelligence for democratic governance, in the first comprehensive survey of this field. Illustrated by a collection of inspiring case studies and edit ... more

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Globalisation, geopolitics, and gender in professional communication

Louise Mullany, Stephanie Schnurr (eds.)

New York; London: Routledge (2023), xiv, 225 pp.

"This edited collection investigates the linguistics of globalisation, geopolitics and gender in workplace cultures in a range of different contemporary international settings. The chapters examine how issues of globalisation, gender and geopolitics affect professionals in different workplace contex ... more

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 Deep Insights

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
Deep Insights