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The global reality of the COVID-19/Corona pandemic paradoxically boosted national politics, broadcasting and citizenship. Media coverage, especially initially, praised citizen solidarity and the creative solutions that were pioneered to care for each other. A year later, a lasting social learning curve throughout and after this crisis seems illusory. The pandemic, this paper argues, needs to be understood in a longer timeframe as the working through and coming to terms with neo-liberal governmentality. The (often hilarious) early responses on social media provide a strong entry to do so. Our focus will be on the Netherlands which had a so-called 'intelligent' lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. Using the authors' own sharing back and forth of toilet paper memes as a starting point, we aim to explore the notion of collective self-reflection and citizen co-education underlying both heated and simply ridiculous posts. Using previous discussion of cultural citizenship, this paper inquires into how pandemic citizenship played out as a vast exercise in disciplining and distinction through jokes and anger. The material suggests a nostalgic turn that might point to an implicitly voiced critique of neoliberal governmentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the crisis of print newspapers, but with more attention paid to issues of production and distribution rather than reception. Furthermore, the scholarship on contemporary print newspaper reception has been limited by a focus on the information dimension and on countries in the Global North. To help overcome these limitations, in this paper we ask two questions that inquire into the reception of print newspapers in the contemporary media environment, and do so within a country from the Global South. Drawing upon an analysis of 158 semi-structured interviews conducted in the City of Buenos Aires and other parts of the country, we find that people continue reading print newspapers not solely, or even primarily, for the information contained in their pages, but for dynamics that tie together news content with materiality, routinization, and larger practices of incorporation of this media artifact into their daily lives. These dynamics are partly shaped by distinctive aspects of the Argentine context, including business strategies, family rituals, urban patterns, and a culture of nostalgia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet has revolutionised our ability to communicate and connect across historic social, political and geographic divides. Where previously gatekeepers mitigated and negotiated access to mass media platforms, today potentially anyone – and any content – can reach millions of users in an instant. This development bears great opportunities for the democratisation of expression and the diversification of public discourse but has likewise broadened the impact of harm caused online. This raises the question how platforms and services can be regulated effectively to combat online harms without jeopardising free and open discourse. The paper explores the Online Harms White Paper published by the UK Government earlier this year and compares its regulatory approach with the infamous German Network Enforcement Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 5 April 2016, Iceland's prime minister became the first high-profile casualty of the Panama Papers investigations published around the world two days earlier, stepping down after reports of his family's hidden offshore wealth triggered massive public protests. The resignation was widely hailed as a demonstration of the power of investigative or "accountability" reporting to activate democratic citizens and effect real-world change. This paper reconstructs the Panama Papers reporting in Iceland as an important new case study in the growing literature on the impacts of journalistic revelations. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we ask what this dramatic case tells us about how major exposés produce political outcomes, as well as how the journalists involved understood the potential impacts of their work. We show that even in what looks like a clear-cut case of the so-called "mobilization model"—where change results from the public's response to a story—more complex dynamics are at work: Reporters worked actively to maximize the impact of their work, understanding these efforts in terms of its inherent newsworthiness, and the ultimate outcome of the revelations was shaped by a cycle of interactions between media and political actors that began well before publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent media ecologies are often characterized by their apparent excess and availability of information, in which elites have lost power to a multitude of citizen users. The 2010s, however, are marked by a new information battlespace, as governments, militaries and news organizations have arrested the initial chaotic free-for-all of the Internet. It was into this environment that the ‘Panama Papers’ were leaked in April 2016. We employ this story to illuminate some of the workings of information warfare in the contemporary Russian media ecology. We reveal the sophisticated gatekeeping work undertaken by a range of actors (state, journalists, news publics) in this ecology and their treatment of information across its historically established (television) and emergent (social) media forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the potential business models of electronic paper devices used by stakeholders in the newspaper value network in the U.S. The value chain and network hold roles important for production and distribution of content on the e-paper device. The newspaper model on e-paper offers particular service on its device. The kiosk model provides additional value to users who can use e-paper reader as mobile platform. It also mentions that newspapers will consider using new distribution channels as way to diversify services.

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since Metro was first launched in Seoul, Korea in May 2002, multiple local titles followed, and free daily papers (FDPs) have been building up their own niches through competition with paid papers for readership and sales as well as expanding their competitive power. In addition, despite their short history, FDPs influence readers' usage behavior and create changes in the morning paid paper market through competition. How do readers perceive FDPs in terms of need satisfaction? This study analyzed the competition among three types of papers (paid newspapers, paid sports papers, and FDPs) in Korea through using niche theory and a uses and gratifications perspective. The findings revealed that FDPs are generally better than sports papers in terms of niche breadth, overlap, and competitive superiority in gratification factors. There has also been competitive displacement between FDPs and sports papers—paid newspapers in consumer usage. In conclusion, FDPs have been successfully established to threaten sports papers and paid newspapers in the morning paper market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that existing accounts of the 'post-feminist' gender regime place excessive emphasis on modes of repudiation of feminism, at the expense of analysing possibilities for the affirmation of feminism in the mainstream media. I argue that this oversight may be rectified by an assessment of the ways in which feminism is affirmed, contested and spoken about in the pages of the quality press. Consequently, the bulk of the paper consists of an analysis of articles specifically about feminism and gender in two British quality newspapers with divergent political orientations. These are The Guardian, which is left-leaning and broadly pro-feminist, and The Times, which is more conservative and ambivalent towards feminism. In so doing, the paper introduces the notion of feminist 'domestication' as central to constructions of feminism in The Guardian, and to a lesser extent in The Times. Domestication refers to the explicit or implicit affirmation of a safe, unthreatening form of feminism via a disavowal of a more radical feminist position. Strategies of domestication thus constitute an acceptable space for feminism to reside, whilst at the same time curtailing its more radical political dimensions. Introducing the notion of 'domestication' gives us a better understanding of the conditions under which feminism can be affirmed within mainstream public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch Revolt and one of the most famous members of the family of Orange-Nassau, is known as a 'propagandist', producing various printed and handwritten media during the Revolt. However, besides the prestigious princes of Orange, the lineage of William of Orange also included other family, the German counts of Nassau. These less prestigious relatives, the 'lesser' Nassau, assisted their princely kin in various ways, but received little attention in the scholarship on the lineage. Therefore, this article sketches the relations between the 'lesser' Nassau and the princes of Orange, and deals with the media-politics of the 'lesser' Nassau, understood as their attempts to reproduce, present and communicate their social status to different publics in different contexts by the use of paper communication media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the archival materials of the National Women and Media Collection at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri in Colombia. Approach used by "Miami Herald" editor Marie Anderson in writing about women; Overview of topics about women included in the collection; Fees associated with using the collections.

Discusses the difference between existing media and the digital media. Elements of the news industry, in paper, broadcast and digital format; Properties of digital media and its consequences for news provision; Ability of the Internet; Dimensions to the concept of news content.

Numerous empirical studies have measured to what degree national mass media arenas in Europe converge in terms of news agendas, ways of framing, and reporting political claims from other countries or EU actors. This article suggests explaining such output-oriented findings with a theoretical model of mechanisms that link different mass media arenas. It is derived from national settings, where mass media arenas are also highly fragmented and yet sufficiently interlinked to be considered a public sphere. The most prominent mechanism is news agencies providing similar input to many arenas. The article draws attention to an under-investigated mechanisms of cooperation, mutual observation, and inter-referencing between different media outlets. Empirical evidence about press reviews in several European countries is presented here for the first time. The daily practice of radio stations, newspapers, or websites, to explicitly quote commentaries or news from other media is found to be a routine in many countries, and it often crosses national borders. The results suggest that the "opinion geography" of press reviews differs from the usual "news geography" in European media, frequently entailing a Europeanised perspective on whose views are seen as relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This articles explores the political functions of eastern European Hebrew journalism in Jewish life in the second half of the nineteenth century. For the Jewish communities spread throughout the world and economic leadership, the press functioned as a virtual "town squares," facilitating the flow of information and the exchange of ideas. The Hebrew press, which had the potential to bridge language barriers between distinct Jewish communities, was characterized by its self-perception as a leader, a spokesman, and a public institute as well as reflection of the "general-Israeli" spirit. This self-perception, combined with the characteristics of journalism as a mode of communication and the national legacy of the Hebrew language, contributed to the re-imaging of the Jewish nation in a modern and secular form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Urban residents are surrounded by discrepant infrastructural capacities ... Being surrounded from all sides, and with such thick textures of surveillance and calculation, promises both the possibility of being really 'pinned down' and disappearing altogether.' (AbdouMaliq Simone)1 We are surrounded, negatively, by infrastructural capacities or, positively, extended by them? Or perhaps both, surrounded and extended? If so, in what proportions? And is it/was it ultimately a choice, or series of choices, ones that can still be made, or not? And what are these externalities, contexts? Are they media/technologies or perhaps the one-time project of 'the city' now taking on the (increasingly alien?) form of urbanisation? Or, beyond that, is there the now marginalised realm of the country/nature? And, 'space'? Are those realms, best characterised perhaps as 'nature', outside or inside us? If inside/outside, are we, somewhat paradoxically, surrounded by ourselves? Or by aspects of ourselves, whose inner/outer separation and possible distortion we need to recognise and address if we are to avoid 'the promises [of] both the possibility of being really 'pinned down' and disappearing altogether'? Or ... * * * * Such questions and some answers are suggested by our special feature in this issue on infrastructures, from which AbdouMaliq Simone's words are taken, by papers from three other substantial projects, one on urbanisation by Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, with a reply from Richard Walker, a second on Africa by David Simon, and a third on technologised and politicised realms by Stephen Graham, now looking into 'urban air'. Introducing one of a series of particular temporal dimensions as explored in this journal, Melissa Wilson draws in part on a reading2 of a particular period, looking into the early pages of City, an early stage of its project, as elites and 'multitudes', edged towards 2000, towards and away from 'millennium.' Further investigations are undertaken in papers on the nature of smart cities as contexts, on a possible basis for social transformation in Poland, and on London's class structure and struggles. Only the third, Mark Davidson and Elvin Wyly's paper following, as does Chris Hamnett, our occasional series on London's class structure, is touched on here. We conclude with a return to Simone's thoughts on infrastructure's more than marginal role in social organisation and to a summing up and a polemical conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The article argues that it is hard to see that media development so far has contributed neither to economic development or to political liberation in African states. The media situation and the literacy problems is connected to social differences and tensions between elite vs. local populations and the urban culture vs. the village. Media transmits stereotypes of modernity and urban life that are conflicting with rural and traditional cultural identities. It is being argued that media changes in the future will make things even worse. African countries are confronted with globalized media trespassing into rural culture and establishing themselves in local consumption patterns, before local media structures have had the possibility to develop. This means a severe threat to local culture and to the possibility of developing civil society at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on media innovation among publishers of metropolitan newspapers in the United States, in cities such as San Diego, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia and Dallas. The situation for metropolitan newspapers is difficult, as they fall between national newspapers, which can aim for extending their reach both nationally and globally, and local newspapers, which have a smaller cost structure and can cater to a more limited, and often more engaged, audience community. Our paper demonstrates that there seems to be great awareness of what can be done by US metropolitan newspapers, but managers are struggling with constraints, such as lack of financial and human resources and general organisational anaemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of archival materials and objects appears as a primary challenge in conducting research on the history of media and communications in India, specifically while writing a comprehensive historical account of Bengali cinema. This paper will try to look at video halls and video tapes as the transient media spaces and objects. In the case of West Bengal, video tapes and video halls are an important part of media history about which little has been written or researched. This paper will try to look into the process of writing media history of scarcely archived media forms following the method of media archaeology and question how the method becomes important in cases of absence of archival materials. This paper will also try to enquire how media ethnography unfolds a different narrative of media history which is otherwise absent in the material archives or institutional records. Using the theoretical framework of the study of archives, this paper tries to explore new archives which present a different history of intermedia transactions in the history of Bengali cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early twentieth century, American newspapers enjoyed high circulations while presenting readers with diverse and plentiful content. After 1920, radio broadcasting made even more information available for public consumption, giving audience members an abundant range of media choices. During a time of plenty for readers and listeners, companies in the business of media struggled with the opposite problem: scarcity. As the amount of media content proliferated, the practical ability to disseminate it was determined by the access to scarce resources, and this was true for both radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. In many respects, the history of the American mass media in the early twentieth century might best be told as a tale of two scarcities, one—the electromagnetic spectrum—defined by absolute limits and the other—the newsprint—defined by access to markets for a particular material, the supply of which often fluctuated in availability and price. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the contributions of Paulo Freire to communication theories, drawing upon a search for communication theory literature on the database Communication and Mass Media Open and the conglomerate source Encyclopedia of Communication Theory. Four encyclopedia entries are reviewed alongside 22 articles. Often identified as an education theorist, Freire and his contributions to the interdisciplinary field of communication can be seen in relation to international development; sign-language interpretation; communication ethics; public communication; culture; mass media; among others. Several studies are conducted in non-Western countries, with a notable focus on multicultural communication toward peace-building and cultural harmony. Additionally, severe social justice issues which involve violation of basic human rights are documented in two indigenous studies. Eight new theory-making papers are identified, in which Freirean theory is mobilized to support communication theory-building. The intersectional and multicultural nature of Freirean theory emerges as leading to diverse applications in social justice, and the review outlines six key Freirean concepts which recur in existing communication theories and studies: dialogue; praxis; banking model; problem-posing; critical consciousness; and emancipation. How each of these concepts are mobilized to guide theorizing in the field of communication are summarized, toward supporting future work in communication as social justice practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africans' voices and contributions to communication scholarship are of interest to many Africanists. Some discourses have explored reasons for this interest. This article continues this conversation. It recognizes the challenges contributing to the limited influence of the African voice in global communication scholarship and contributes to the theorizing of the African media. There are a range of factors impeding robust African engagement in global communication scholarship. These factors are explored in this paper. However, African scholars should look beyond these factors. The first part of the article explores reasons for the lack of active African input in this discussion. The second part of the paper explores the peculiarities of Africa that should form building blocks for the emergence of African media typologies. The extant normative media theories fail to consider the realities of African governance structures and philosophies. These should lead to a media framework more reflective of the realities of Africa. Indeed, the article proposes a conversation of four media typologies that closely match the continental conditions: pragmatic authoritarianism, pragmatic progressive, pragmatic libertarianism, and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The very existence of truth, let alone its worth, is currently under attack from many quarters. In the wider culture, disinformation and other forms of misrepresenting the truth spread far and wide, as information conduits proliferate. This paper suggests some reasons for the "anti-truth" trend. Mainstream media have played a role, as have theoreticians from fields as diverse as philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, and literary criticism. "Anti-truth" trends are having a serious impact on psychological treatment, affecting its content and the conception of its goals. This paper suggests some problematic outcomes of this phenomenon for practitioners and patients in various forms of psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the issue of inclusion of the names of reviewers. Reviewing journal papers takes considerable time and effort. reviewers comments usually improve the clarity and quality of the final manuscript. Indeed, some papers would never be published without substantial revisions following input from reviewers. Reviewers receive no pay for their efforts, and sometimes not even a word/note of thanks. It has been argued that reviewers may be more inclined to recommend papers for acceptance if their own names are published in the paper.

This article presents an analysis of newspaper readers in Beijing, China. Categorization of readers clarifies the characteristics of different newspapers. With workers as its target audience, the "Worker's Daily," for example, attributed 62.8 percent of its readership to workers. Similarly, 88.9 percent of the readers of the "Chinese Peasant," are peasants. With individual characteristics, each newspaper has to confront its own group of readers. However, readers' interests vary widely and, when one is not totally satisfied with one paper, he turns to another. A reader, therefore, is usually reading more than one paper. According to the data, of 1,966 readers, 8.1 percent read one paper. 14.5 percent read two papers, 18.8 percent read three papers, 18.5 percent read four papers, and 37.8 percent read five papers. A majority of readers read newspapers during their noon and evening spare time. According to a survey of 1,200 urban staff and workers conducted by the Beijing Statistics Bureau, their average spare time per day is only three-and-a-half hours. Since evenings are also TV time, there is not much time for newspaper reading, and therefore newspaper editors and reporters should keep their readers in mind by supplying brief news items.

In April 2019, the government published its long-awaited Online Harms White Paper.[1] The White Paper proposes a comprehensive framework for digital media regulation under the umbrella concept of a duty of care. If implemented, the proposals will create a new regulatory regime that will sit alongside broadcast regulation and press self-regulation in determining what content can be made available to a mass audience. While various piecemeal regulations have since been introduced to different parts of the digital media, it was only a matter of time before comprehensive regulation found its way onto the agenda. [Extracted from the article]

This section invites authors to submit articles about big data and media management which will be reviewed for publishing.

A new method for transporting droplets is presented to avoid directive radiation of surface acoustic wave (SAW). An interdigital transducer (IDT) is fabricated on a 128°-YX LiNbO3 piezoelectric substrate using microelectric technology. A droplet to be transported is placed on a steel ball, which is driven by SAW. The droplet on the steel ball is then transported together with the steel ball. 0.5ul red ink solution was successfully transported by help of the steel ball with 2 mm diameters at 30.9 dBm electric signal power. Color development reaction is also implemented by transporting reaction solution using presented method to a paper-based device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of academic research documents harmful media coverage of indigenous populations across the globe. New Zealand is no exception. Aotearoa's indigenous people, Māori, share similar damaging experiences, leading one major NZ media company to publish an apology for their historically poor depiction of tangata whenua. This paper adds to that wealth of evidence using the automated methods of machine learning to examine coverage of Māori in NZ print media. Across roughly 800,000 sentences – spanning over two decades of coverage – this research investigates print media discourses involving Māori at a mass scale while demonstrating the applicability of such tools for further research. The results replicate a collection of existing findings at large-N scale, further documenting problematic discussions of violence, political representation, and culture, among several other concerns. The novel approach also hints at complex, obscure relationships embedded within problematic language in Aotearoa's print media, identifying notions of division - both implied and otherwise - along with notable instances of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the remapping of the American landscape as a mass reproducible visual medium onto foreign territories - particularly Afghanistan - during the Cold War. A series of films produced by the US Bureau of Mines and later screened in these territories are the sites of analysis. These films were the source material that applied the American landscape in its many forms, climates and uses to the US's physical infrastructure projects during the time. As sights, these projects of infrastructure building are indicative of the colonial gaze US technicians used to reproduce these landscapes and their underlying systems of power and class around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Escape from the Dead Letter Office: Smuggled Birds and the Paperless Body in the Americas' brings together Eduardo Galeano's Century of the Wind, Carolina Maria de Jesus' Child of the Dark and Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the scrivener' in an analysis of dead letters. The essay suggests the metonymic relationship between textual and physical bodies. It traces a motif of paper - recycled newspapers, stolen archives, incinerated codices, paper money, letter-writing campaigns - in order to investigate the ways in which marginalized communities are exiled from the world of letters. This 'paperlessness' serves as a prophecy for more terrifying disappearances, and the theoretical contributions of Jacques Derrida, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Karl Marx, Roberto González Echevarría, and Lisa Sánchez González inform the analysis. The article itself commits to paper the resourcefulness of individuals and organizations in procuring paper for communities under siege. It seeks to bring the material aspect of literacy into clearer focus by investigating the ways in which paper circulates and is robbed of circulation, how paper is consumed literally and figuratively, and why the weight of paper can be the measure of its value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopts meta-analysis and text mining approaches to systematically explore the prevalence of agenda setting theory (AST) in Africa-focused publications indexed in high-impact databases from 2000 to 2020. It aims to evaluate the usage frequency of AST in Africa-focused studies, the dominant perspectives explored in these studies, the dominant communication medium of reference, the dominant academic disciplines, the dominant regions of focus in Africa, frequent keywords within these studies, and the authors' institutional affiliations. The findings revealed a dearth of quality literature from 2000 to 2008, after which at least one paper was published each year from 2007 to 2020, with the exception of 2016. The research showed that media scholars (51%) published more papers, followed by scholars from political sciences (12%), ethnic studies (12%), public health (9%), development studies (6%), and public administration (6%). Although many papers were about South Africa (33%), other dominant countries of focus were Ghana (18%), Nigeria (12%), and Kenya (9%). The qualitative review revealed the major perspectives of the AST- related papers to be issues of political advocacy, governance, and social activism; rural, national, and regional transformation and development; and social representations and framing. The medium of communication most often referenced for agenda setting was the newspaper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do far-right actors and issues structure public debates and become mainstream over time? Previous research has shown that far-right actors are central actors in political conflicts in Western Europe, partly due to their dominance in struggles on cultural issues. The entrenchment of the far right substantially depends on their networks and public visibility. However, we still lack a long-term understanding of public debates about far-right actors and their discursive interconnections across issues. In this paper, we deliver the first longitudinal analysis of the evolution and structure of far-right discourse networks and the diffusion of far-right ideas in public debates since the 1990s. Methodologically, this paper innovates by combining discourse network analysis with automated text analysis to investigate how the relations between far-right actors and issues are represented in mass media. We analyze more than 500,000 newspaper articles in six different mass media outlets in Germany. The results show that far-right actors have gained more public visibility since the 1990s. The study demonstrates that the mass media debates have introduced and amplified cultural issues "owned" by the far right. Far-right discourse networks in mass media have grown, discursive interactions have intensified and discourse networks have become more centralized. Our results indicate that the discursive mainstreaming of the far right evolved in the context of the "refugee crisis" in 2015, and was linked to the AfD's institutional access. Overall, the study aids in developing a better understanding of the success of the far right and the crucial role of public debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conservative critique of mainstream media that has fed increasing levels of media distrust originated in anti-communist publications in the 1930s and was cultivated by various interests on the right over the next two decades. National Review was an influential purveyor of this critique in the late 1950s and used the publication of "The Last Days of Joe McCarthy" by political journalist Richard Rovere in 1958 to highlight it. An analysis of reader responses to Rovere's article reveals that this conservative media critique resonated with many on the right and provides evidence that National Review had begun to establish itself among conservatives as a trustworthy alternative to the mainstream media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free daily newspapers, first introduced in Sweden in 1995, have proved to be much more than a passing phenomenon. By 2002, 80 free daily newspapers were introduced in 26 countries, 60 of them still exist. In thirteen countries free papers are responsible for more than ten percent of the total daily weekday circulation. The total circulation of the 60 free papers is almost 10 million copies, every day more than 20 million people read these papers. Vie success of the free papers is the result of their efficient cost structure and their ability to reach a new and relatively young audience. When looking more closely at the firms that publish these free newspapers two different models emerge; first, the entrepreneur entering a new market, and second the local or national newspaper firm. In the second model, free papers are launched to prevent other firms entering the market or to counter new firms already in the market. In the long run these obstructive tactics may develop into more positive strategies. Most readers are former ‘non-readers’ or people who read paid and free newspapers. Existing firms are developing strategies to benefit from the growing readership of newspapers created by free papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the use of multiple platforms is tied to awareness of algorithms. It builds on the premise that users interact with ecologies or environments of technologies rather than single platforms. The study also supplements work on algorithmic awareness by implementing a mixed-method study to account for how Costa Rican users of Netflix and Spotify understood and related to the algorithms of these platforms. This study combined a survey of 258 participants and 21 in-depth semistructured interviews. Findings demonstrate that multi-platform users were more aware of algorithms and carried out more practical actions to obtain algorithmic recommendations than single-platform users. Although user type did not predict participants' attitudes towards algorithmic recommendations, higher levels of awareness were associated with more positive attitudes towards algorithms. The study also shows that differences in levels of awareness explained users' emotional arousal derived from algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only claimed innumerable lives but the concomitant inflation has also frustrated many small and large enterprises, not to mention the loss of jobs that employees have suffered and sometimes succumbed to through self-harm and suicides. In this context, this paper probes how a politics of representation has deeply informed the dissemination and consumption of 'COVID news,' rendering a legitimate visibility largely to the loss and contributions of subjects that have access to socio-economic and political resources. Milan Kundera uses the term 'symbolic voltage' to refer to the role that the media plays in 'constructing' our everyday realities. In The Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio states that modern media technology has created a 'crisis of representation' or an optical illusion, where the distinctions between near and far, object and image, have imploded. In a bid to keep apace with a metanarrative of pandemic-engendered loss, the collective consciousness of different societies has not adequately focused on the marginalised subjects – the wage worker, the woman, the juvenile and the scholar from suburban/rural area. The paper argues that the 'Covid-19-as-a-past' is likely to be represented through the semantics of traditional history, which is a narrative of and by the powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon two previously published research papers exploring Canadian media reporting of childhood in the first wave of the pandemic, this paper investigates how constructions of childhood evolved from the first wave to the fourth wave of the pandemic. This qualitative research is guided by the central research question: Over the span of 2 years, from 2020 to 2022, what changes are evident in discourses reported within media focused on the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on Canadians under the age of 18 years? Findings from this study suggest that in the fourth wave young people were constructed as innocent victims of pandemic restrictions framed through an adult-centric lens; noticeably absent were representations of young people under the age of 18 in their voices. A key recommendation emerged from this study: any future research investigating the impact of the pandemic on young people under aged 18 years must include their full participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 9/11, representations of Muslims and the Islamic world in Western mass media have received much scholarly attention, not least because such representations influence how Muslims are perceived by and integrated into Western societies. Most existing studies have shown that Muslims and Islam tend to be framed negatively through orientalist and Islamophobic discourses. However, this paper argues that in specific contexts, neoliberal ideology has generated mass-media representations of Muslims and the Islamic world that differ from orientalist versions. In contexts relating to the globalised halal market, for example, neoliberal discourses portray Muslims and the Islamic world as economically useful and/or exploitable rather than culturally threatening. This argument is supported by an analysis of representations of Muslims and the Islamic world in local and regional newspapers in Brazil, one of the largest halal meat and poultry exporters in the world. Drawing on theories of neoliberalism, a discourse theoretical approach and the notion of imaginative geographies, the study examines newspaper articles on the halal business. Based on the findings, this paper suggests that scholars should subject neoliberal ideology (and its interaction with orientalism and Islamophobia) to greater scrutiny in future research on representations of Muslims and the Islamic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for paper is presented about how performance art influences technology and media.

A call for papers for a 2008 issue of the journal is presented.

Collaborative dissemination of research findings in the public and media spheres has the potential to reach large audiences, enhance forced migrants' political participation and impact policies. 'Going public' further requires both researchers and forced migrants to engage visibly in a sphere that is often unexpected and less familiar to them. This paper discusses the methodological and ethical challenges and possibilities surrounding joint dissemination, drawing on a case study of public and media co-dissemination that occurred as part of an anti-deportation public campaign. In 2018, the Israeli government initiated a forced deportation plan aimed at deporting refugees to Rwanda. The authors had previously conducted research exploring the journeys of refugees who 'voluntarily' departed Israel to Rwanda, revealing that the deportees were pressured to embark on life-threatening journeys, eventually gaining protection in Europe. The findings were collaboratively shared through various activities, such as media interviews, public events, advocacy and cooperation with civil society organisations in Israel and globally. This paper discusses the three main aspects derived from our experiences: power imbalances and divisions of roles, consent as a process, and re-traumatisation and agency. Finally, ethical and practical recommendations for mitigating some of these challenges are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the ubiquitous presence of media devices, media multitasking has become prevalent in an educational context. Several authors have synthesized the literature on this topic, but no systematic review has been carried out so far. The present study fills this gap by examining the academic papers in the past decade to delineate the research trends, gaps, and directions for future research. Following the Standard Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA), we analyzed 88 papers from various aspects including study focus, contexts, participants, and methods. Findings point to the necessity to focus on the reasons behind multitasking, include more K-12 learners, and adopt qualitative methodology. To support future work on the predictors of media multitasking, we propose a conceptual framework that includes nine variables in technology, personal, and environment domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of Covid-19 health communicators around the globe have had to reach, urge, and persuade individuals and communities to adopt appropriate health protective behaviors. They have used a mix of communication channels, including outdoor media and public signage which are the focus of this paper. Drawing on a comparative linguistic landscape analysis, this paper critically examined the amount, content, and prominence of Covid-19 signage in Hackney, a London borough severely hit by the first wave of the pandemic. Having analyzed 1288 signs collected between May and July 2020, we found significant differences in Covid-19 signage between deprived and less deprived areas. These differences (e.g., in messaging about staying at home) have created inequalities in access to Covid-19 related health information and guidance. We also explored the changes in Covid-19 signage over time and the tailoring of risk and health messages to minority communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of Indian media. Utilizing the Propaganda Model formulated by Herman and Chomsky in the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988), the paper aims to critically assess the news patterns and media performance of the mainstream Indian media. The contribution of the paper will be the application of the propaganda model in the context of Indian media. For this study, we have analyzed the media coverage of two events – India's ban on Chinese apps and the Pulwama attack. We focus on how Indian Media has helped the Government to establish the propaganda of nationalism during both events, which is explained by Herman and Chomsky in the five filters of news production. We investigate how the anti-China sentiment and the Pulwama attack have been used by the Government to divert attention from their failure of governance, and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The corporate media is playing its part in the machinations of the ruling BJP party. We conclude that the plurality of voices amongst journalists is in decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defines the category of the sports image ad in contradistinction to the sports narrative ad. Image ads, unlike narrative ads, are characterised by the use of sports images without employing spatio-temporal logic and sequentiality. After engaging in a brief discussion of the term image, the paper focuses on a structuralist study of the images employed in sports image ads on Indian television, and subjects them to rigorous semantic and syntactic analysis, using numerous examples, in order to extract the implications these images have for Indian sports discourse. It also undertakes a historical analysis of the changes that sports images have undergone over time in order to trace the changes in sports discourse in India since the advent of television in the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of two Miami newspapers (one daily, one weekly) reveals that both relied heavily on individuals rather than institutions as news sources in the aftermath of civil disturbances during January, 1989. While the daily used relatively similar proportions of commercial and nongovernment personnel, more than a third of the weekly paper's sources were either residents or administrative personnel and staff in government agencies. Of the 181 different sources identified, the two papers shared 27. Most of the papers' reporter information channels were through interviews. Suggestions are made regarding further analysis of both newspapers' stake in the business community and maintenance of the area's economic status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of "Worker's Daily," readers in Beijing, China. Workers comprised 30.3 percent of the 2.423 survey subjects and 28.5 percent of all newspaper readers. Some 94 percent of the workers read newspapers. The 6 percent who do not read any papers are chiefly older workers who have a very limited amount of education. Out of 2,423 subjects, 462 read the "Worker's Daily," making up 23.5 percent of the entire news readership and taking third place among the national newspaper reading public, next to "Renmin ribao," and "China Youth Daily." Most workers enjoy a reading habit that is demonstrated in the response to the number of days per week spent reading newspapers. Among 680 respondents, 50.2 percent read everyday, 9.0 percent read six days, 1.6 read five days, 2.0 percent read four days, 2.0 percent read three days, 0.1 percent read two days, and 1.0 percent read once a week, with 33.9 percent answering "it varies." Another statistic that includes answers from 685 workers shows the following: 1.5 percent read early in the morning; 8.2 percent read in the morning; 11.7 percent read at noon, 7.0 percent read in the afternoon; 28.8 percent read in the evening; 42.9 percent read at various times. In other words, workers read during their noon and evening spare times. There are 265 workers that read everyday for an average of 55 minutes.

The article comments on the challenges confronting media companies in protecting media content. According to the author, content and distribution mediums are interdependent with one another making the unwanted transfer of audio and video content practically impossible. However, the link to a specific medium of content is cut and it is now easy to exchange content.

This article contextualizes the manner in which the newspaper "Votes for Women" evolved to challenge and compete with the press prior to 1912, within a discussion of the Women's Social and Political Union's (WSPU) wider press strategy. The populist style may simply have been considered the most appropriate means of conveying news of the militant campaign's sensational activities; new methods of protest necessitating new means of communication. However, viewed within the wider context of the WSPU's activities, the paper's populism should be considered a deliberate part of an organizational press strategy. The attempts to attract, and subsequently influence and critique, news coverage indicated the Union's press-aware outlook. With this cognizance sharpened by intensifying press hostility to militancy, Votes for Women's populist format, together with its efforts for mass-circulation, signaled an effort to confront apparent press prejudice by marketing an alternative source of suffrage news to a large audience.