Search

This book examines the media reform processes and re-democratization projects of Ghana and Nigeria's emerging democracies. It evaluates and critiques these reform processes, arguing that because of dependency approaches resulting from the transplanting of policy framework from the West into these emerging democracies, the policy goals and objectives of the reforms have not been achieved. Consequently, the inherent socio-cultural, economic and political factors, coupled with the historical antecedents of these countries, have also affected the reform process. Drawing from policy documents, analyses and interviews, Ufuoma Akpojivi argues that the lack of citizens'active participation in policy processes has led to neo-liberalization and the continued universalization of Western ideologies such as democracy, media freedom and independence. Akpojivi posits that the recognition of socio-cultural, political and economic factors inherent to these emerging democracies, coupled withthe communal participation of citizens, will facilitate true media reform processes and development of these countries.

The participatory turn in media, arts and design along with interrelated developments in the proliferation of social and network media have changed our understanding of the contemporary mediascape. Mobile Story Making in an Age of Smartphones reveals how smartphones and storytelling are forming a symbiosis that empowers twenty-first century citizens and creatives around the world. The edited collection further develops definitions and debate around creative mobile media and its impact on media, art and design. It brings together mobile artists, digital ethnographers, filmmakers working with smartphones, illustrators, screenwriters as well as musicians utilizing apps and mobile devices, who explore new directions in the creative arts with a focus on screen production. Lastly, it demonstrates how mobile devices and smartphones can make a difference in peoples'lives and catalyses creativity in order to tackle current socio-cultural issues.

This book examines women's participation in the Olympic Games since they were allowed to be included in that global arena. Using a holistic, social scientific approach, and emphasizing the rhetoric of sport mediatization, Female Olympians reviews the literature relative to sexism, racism, and ageism before providing historical, political, economic, and socio-cultural perspectives such as the gendered language of Olympic reportage, religious considerations, women's bodies relative to their training for the Games, drugs and doping, and female Paralympians. With numerous critical case studies, never-before assembled data, and personal interviews with athletes, this volume offers insights that both investigate and celebrate female Olympians'successes.

This book presents an analysis of the current Lebanese media system. From a theoretical angle, it discusses the extent to which this system can be analyzed using the ideal types put forth by Hallin and Mancini in their seminal work Comparing Media Systems. Sarah El-Richani assesses the complex dimensions developed by the two scholars and utilizes their work as inspiration for a process of remodeling, amending the sub-indicators to identify salient factors and suggesting a new model. Featuring the views of over 60 stakeholders, this book gives a rare, critical, and concise account of the Lebanese media system.

This volume explores how to engage audiences both beyond and within the academy more deeply in environmental research through arts-based forms. It builds on a multi-pronged case study of scripts for documentary film, audio-visual and stage formats, focusing on how the identity of a place is constructed and contested in the face of environmental concerns around fossil-fuel extraction in a globalized, visual society--and specifically on the rising, international public-relations war over Alberta's stewardship of the tar sands. Each script is followed by discussion of the author's choices of initiating idea, research sources, format, voices, world of the story, structure and visual style, and other notes on the convergence of synthesis, analysis and (re)presentation in the script. Included are lively analysis and commentary on screenwriting and playwriting theory, the creation and dissemination of the scripts, and reflections to ground a proposed framework for writing eco-themed scripts for screen, audio-visual and stage formats.

Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, Karen J. Renner argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. From novels to music videos, photography to video games, the evil child haunts a range of texts and comes in a variety of forms, including changelings, ferals, and monstrous newborns. In this book, Renner illustrates how each subtype offers a different explanation for the problem of the “evil” child and adapts to changing historical circumstances and ideologies.

This edited book is the first of its kind to systematically address the intersection of e-democracy and European politics. It contributes to an improved understanding of the role that new media technologies play in European politics and the potential impact that Internet-based political participation processes may have on modern-day representative democracy in Europe. A unique, holistic approach is taken to examine e-democracy's current state and prospects in Europe from three, partially overlapping and interlocking perspectives: e-public, e-participation and e-voting. The authors provide both theory-inspired reflections on e-democracy's contribution to the formation of the European public sphere, as well as rich empirical analyses of contemporary e-participation phenomena such as the European Citizens'Initiative or e-voting practices in Estonia. Based on the presented findings, the concluding chapter combines a prospective outlook with recommendations for future paths towards meaningful integration of e-democracy in European politics and governance.

This book considers the ways in which Muslims view the way they are being viewed, not viewed, or incorrectly viewed, by the West. The book underscores a certain “will-to-visibility” whereby Muslims/ Arabs wish just to be “seen” and to be marked as fellow human beings. The author relates the failure to achieve this visibility to a state of desperation that inextricably and symmetrically ties visibility to violence. When Syrian and Palestinian refugees recently started refusing to be photographed, they clearly ushered the eventual but inevitable collapse of the image and its final futility. The photograph has been completely emptied of its last remaining possibility of signification. The book attempts to engage with questions about the ways in which images are perceived within cross cultural contexts. Why and how do people from different cultural backgrounds view the same image in opposing ways; why do cartoon, photographs, and videos become both the cause and target of bloody political violence – as witnessed recently by the deadly attacks against Charlie Hebdo in France and in the swift military response by the US, Jordan, France, and others to videotaped violence by ISIS.