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Presents views on the media coverage of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Background on journalistic practice; Reason behind the search for religion cover stories; Problem with the media's treatment of the scrolls.

The development of the Internet and mass media has facilitated access to information and freedom of expression in unprecedented ways, but in so doing there have been many violations, especially of the right to privacy. Such violations have led to calls for the establishment of the right to be forgotten. In this paper, we focus on clarifying the concept of the right to be forgotten and the conditions for establishing this. Moreover, we consider the European approach to the right to be forgotten (RTBF), showing how different European instruments have been employed to recognize this right, such as recommendations, regulations, and directives, in order to coordinate national efforts on this issue. In addition, this paper will analyze the stance of some national Arabic legislation regarding the RTBF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare reforms in contemporary Russia are based on partial redistribution of responsibilities and resources from the state to other actors, including private business and civil society. Reforms in old age pensions, housing and utilities, primary and secondary education have affected wide social groups and have triggered public debates and protests, reflected in the mass media. This article analyses how these reforms are portrayed in three Russian media outlets representing different political positions—Rossiiskaia gazeta (official government media outlet), Novaia gazeta (independent media outlet belonging to the liberal opposition), and Zavtra (patriotic media outlet belonging to the nationalist opposition). The two independent papers have divergent critical perspectives on reforms. These three Federation-wide newspapers represent the range of political positions that are articulated publicly on non-securitized issues in contemporary Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) and the Protection of Information Bill (PIB) as potential challenges to freedom of expression and good governance in South Africa. The modus operandi and the objectives of MAT and PIB are presented and examined to indicate whether these may act as threats to freedom of expression and good governance. This paper uses information obtained from academic articles, the South African Constitution, legislative documents, news articles as well as African and international reports. This research finds that if MAT and PIB are passed as laws without substantial amendments in favour of the genuine respect for freedom of media and press, they will potentially lead to the regression of both freedom of expression and good governance and above all, threaten democracy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the repetition of prophecies on the end of the book, and changes in book production and reading demographics. The paper hypothesizes that in Western societies perceptions of the death of the book have been influenced by the greater mental demands of consuming textual media in comparison with their audiovisual counterparts. In order to understand how these different mental demands have influenced debates on the death of the book, the paper shows that the 20th century witnessed significant changes in book-reading demographics and book distribution which rather paradoxically correlated not only with the growth of audiovisual media and changes in educational demographics but also with the explosion of book consumption and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upsurge of TPLF led regime to power installed ethnic politics and deconstruction of Ethiopian history with corporate corruption, ultra-vires and pseudo-federalism. The misappropriations of national assets added with autocratic nature of the regime procreated erratic political oppositions and protests since the party set on to power. The political marginalization at intra-party level also created split, which brought state elites in Amhara and Oromia regions to support the acute popular protest. These political scenarios have compelled TPLF to abscond into Mekelle and the coming of reformist leaders to power in 2018. This paper thus aimed to uncover TPLF's political strategy in post 2018 Ethiopia by employing a qualitative case study with a secondary data obtained from Mass Media, commentaries and digitized outlets. The loss of key political positions and attachment of the regime's wrong deeds to TPLF has bugging its elites after the coming of the new premiership. As counter to the reformist leaders, TPLF undertook huge militarization, destabilization and proxies, inducing popular fear, supporting like-minded regional oppositions to propagandize sensitive political issues to regain its lost prestige. This power rivalry created political absurdism, where political decisions and policies of the reformists had continued to be officially banned by TPLF in a way that disastrously impacted the survival of the state. Thus, it is important to undertake political reconciliation to freeze the prevailing political deadlocks for the continuation of the polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the repetition of prophecies on the end of the book, and changes in book production and reading demographics. The paper hypothesizes that in Western societies perceptions of the death of the book have been influenced by the greater mental demands of consuming textual media in comparison with their audiovisual counterparts. In order to understand how these different mental demands have influenced debates on the death of the book, the paper shows that the 20th century witnessed significant changes in book-reading demographics and book distribution which rather paradoxically correlated not only with the growth of audiovisual media and changes in educational demographics but also with the explosion of book consumption and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenced by promising economic indicators, the mass media and policy circles have begun to use the term "China Model" to celebrate China's fast-speed development. However, researchers are still not clear what exactly the China Model is. This paper provides a critical examination of the China Model of development. This paper starts with a discussion of what are the major characteristics of the China Model and why the developing countries are attracted to them. Then this paper argues that researchers should not take the China Model for granted because its ingredients are highly contested. Finally, this paper discusses what implication the China Model has for developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyse the perception of Koreans overseas in South Korean mass media. Nowadays, due to globalization processes, the economic, political and cultural contacts between South Korean society and Korean diaspora has intensified. As a result, the perception of Korean immigrants in South Korea is becoming more positive. The analyses of media materials show that South Korean media highly estimate the contribution made by Korean immigrants to the development of South Korea, both historically and in the modern period. In addition, media also praise the positive qualities of Korean immigrants, such as being hardworking, and their active participation in the political and economic life of the host country. Another common narrative is the positive role of Korean diaspora in bilateral relations between the host country and South Korea. The comparison of recent media materials with those of the beginning of the XXI century shows that the positive representation of Korean diaspora is a recent tendency. The article also underlines that the way South Korean media develop a narrative about South Korean diaspora is on many occasions close to the narrative of South Korean officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the contrasting media portrayals of female political participation in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Through a thorough discourse analysis of Saudi, British, and American newspaper articles surrounding the 2015 municipal elections, we scrutinize how the portrayal of women as a subject group has shifted from one that requires the constant approval of guardians in the public sphere to one that makes its own decisions and actively participates in politics. We analyze what types of discourses and frames have supported this drastic shift in official Saudi media discourses. We then contrast these findings with the portrayal of Saudi female political participation in Western countries that claim to uphold human rights and gender equality, in contrast to Saudi Arabia. Finally, we contrast our findings with the perceptions of 50 female Saudis regarding female agency and political participation in Saudi Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of the relative pronoun (who) with nonhuman animals. The paper looks at what dictionaries, an encyclopedia, grammars, publication manuals, newspapers, and news agencies say and do relative to this issue. In addition to investigating the views and practices of these authoritative publications, the study also searched a 100-million-word collection (corpus) of spoken and written English. The study found that while some reference works reject or ignore the use of (who) with nonhuman animals, other works discuss the possibility, and (who) does occur in the corpus with nonhuman animals. Explanations for such usage include psychological closeness with particular nonhuman animals and/or features shared with humans. The paper suggests that the use of (who) with nonhuman animals might play a role in promoting human attitudes and behaviors beneficial to fellow animals. However, it cautions that the correlation between language use, on the one hand, and attitudes and behaviors, on the other hand, is not a perfect one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the use of the Canadian media by McGill University professor R. B. Y. Scott to spread word of the Dead Sea Scrolls and generate funds for the purchase of Cave 4 material. Elements that have shaped the media's knowledge of the scrolls; Contributions of Scott to the media several years following the discovery of the Scrolls; Ways in which Scott used the local press to secure funding.

According to mainstream media and political discourse, human smugglers are among the cruellest figures of our time, individuals who prey on migrants' need for assistance. Motivated by the circulation of this pejorative view in media and political discourse, I carried out ethnographic research with Syrian refugees and smugglers in Turkey, Greece, Jordan, and Lebanon with the ultimate goal of documenting what being a smuggler entails for the very actors of this unfolding drama. Fieldwork showed me how human smuggling was rooted in patterns of cooperation and support. And yet, most if not all my interlocutors, including the "smugglers" themselves, spoke of smuggling in negative terms. What I argue in this paper is that the smuggler, a category functional to the security apparatus, is not only manufactured within law enforcement circles and mainstream media, but even by those very people who are discriminated or targeted by states' migration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate in Kazakhstani mass media over what constitutes proper Islamic belief and conduct. This paper examines a running dispute between Zikiriya Zhandarbek, an intellectual based at a university in southern Kazakhstan, and scripturalist Islamic institutions, such as the Kazakhstani Muftiate and the Islamic television channel Asyl Arna. In his tirades against "Salafist" and "untraditional" members of the Muftiate and Asyl Arna, Zhandarbek uses rhetoric inviting identification with domestic traditions and Akhmed Yasawi, a local Sufi saint. Conversely, scripturalists' rhetoric identifies them as scholars working to revive knowledge of the Qur'an and Islam. However, both parties claim to represent the Kazakh nation, showing the overwhelming importance of nationalist rhetoric in Kazakhstan today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the construction of Islamic authority in Kazakhstani online media. I build on the growing scholarship in Central Asian studies that questions the logocentric nature of Islamic authority, even for scripturalist Muslims. Taking the YouTube channel of Abdughappar Smanov as a case study, I argue that some scripturalist preachers in Kazakhstan construct their Islamic authority by tapping into Soviet, Kazakh, and global currents of masculinity and sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of the Bahá'ís of Iran, the country's largest non-Muslim religious minority, is a "suspended" genocide and hence alarming. The human rights violations against the members of the Bahá'í community have been designed in such a way to draw as little international attention as possible. It is designed to eliminate slowly rather than to eradicate abruptly. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic has actively pursued the policy of Bahá'í persecution. This paper focuses on one aspect of the tactics used by the Iranian regime to violate the human rights of the Bahá'í community in Iran. To do so, moral panic theory and Foucault's power discourse have been used to offer an analysis of the Bahá'í persecutions as an underlying feature of Iran's domestic policy of othering, religious intolerance and Shi'a supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Summers occupied the professorship of Chinese for two decades at King's College London. He was also a trailblazer in promoting the study of Japanese culture in Victorian Britain, but he has been an underrated and understudied figure in British history. Summers was an ardent supporter of modern printing. He believed printed media was the most effective medium to transform British perceptions of Asia, which in turn would help support Britain's foreign political, commercial and missionary enterprise. He also orchestrated the printing of catalogues and journals in his capacity as library assistant to the British Museum and the India Office Library. He even set up his own press to print a newspaper in order to disseminate knowledge of East Asia to a broader readership. Based on primary materials that have rarely been used before, this paper positions Summers in the study of book history, material culture and print mediums in order to reassess his pioneering efforts in Sinological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media and communication rights of Palestinians in Israel are designed to deny them of collective cultural rights, specifically the right to express their identity through the mass media and to participate equally in the process of national culture building. Through a critical analysis of the documents that shape the media industry in Israel and their historical evolution, this paper lays bare the assumptions underlying Israeli media policies. The policies are designed in a discourse branding ‘Palestinian-Israelis’ a linguistic minority, and portraying them as the ‘enemy within’, thus barring their participation in the development of Israeli culture by limiting their electronic media participation to separate channels targeting both them and Arabs in neighboring states. The paper argues that this policy stems from a narrow interpretation of ‘democracy’ that rejects identification with the Orient and embraces neo-liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a worldwide increase in experience with species protection, few scientific publications are available to assist in deciding how to use ecological knowledge to protect species and how to proceed in the absence of this knowledge. To strengthen the link between science and applied conservation, we suggest an article format that covers all activities towards species protection including both its ecological and its political components. This article is an attempt to provide such a template for publishing conservation case studies. The paper focuses on the experience gained in recent activities to promote butterfly conservation in Israel. It describes the parallel components of these activities: (a) selecting species for protection; (b) studying the species and identifying threats while identifying potential links between these threats and services for ecosystems and humans; and (c) acting to raise public awareness and initiate conservation actions. Special emphasis is given to two components of the process that receive little attention in other publications, namely, interpreting scientific knowledge in terms of biological indicators and eco-system services to humans, giving conservation efforts political leverage; and the practical aspects of raising public awareness. Specifically in this context, we elaborate on the relative contribution of local and international NGOs, political institutions, international law, and, especially, the media. The paper closes with lessons from this process that may be of practical use to scientists and conservationists worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what it calls violence against democracy in Nigeria, epitomized by the perversion and gross inefficiency of democratic structures, institutions and processes by those saddled with the responsibility of nurturing them. It identifies the sources of the violence to be both internal and external, the former including the state, the constitution, political party, civil society, mass media and public bureaucracy; and the latter basically the so-called New World Order and its 'anarchic' globalization. The paper also examines the forms and character of the violence, which manifest largely in form of the criminalization and privatization of the state and its apparatus of governance. This may not be unconnected to the weak institutionalization of democratic structures and political culture, which was further exacerbated by prolonged military dictatorship with their attendant culture of violence. The major recommendation of the paper is for a continuous process of social mobilization and political reengineering at all levels of governance within the context of a reformist and developmental state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates trends in police brutality using data found through the Lexis/Nexis system. Using the keywords "police brutality," 15 newspapers classified as "major papers" by the Lexis/Nexis service were searched for descriptions of incidents of police misconduct against citizens that appeared from January 1, 1990 to May 31, 1992. One hundred and thirty distinct incidents of police brutality were analyzed based on the race and gender of the officers and of the victim, as well as issues of socioeconomic class. The situational characteristics surrounding the alleged assault were categorized and discussed. Minority citizens were involved in the vast majority of the incidents. The data also suggested a definite lack of penalties against the officers revolved in abusive actions against citizens. Further, a citizen was equally likely to be assaulted for a disrespectful attitude towards a law enforcement officer than if the citizen had posed a serious bodily threat to the officer or another human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Constitution of Denmark of 1849 establishes the Evangelical Lutheran Church as the Church of Denmark, which "shall as such be supported by the State." A handful of other denominations enjoyed recognition by royal decree until this practice was ended in 1970 with the new Marriage Act which allowed church weddings with civil validity to take place not only in the Church of Denmark but also in recognized denominations and other religious communities that obtain authorization from the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs. In 1998 an expert committee was established to advise the Minister on applications for denominational recognition. The committee consisted of myself, a historian of religions and chairman, sociologist of religion Ole Riis, later replaced by Margit Warburg, Church historian Jørgen Stenbæk, later replaced by Per Ingesman and professor of law Eva Smith, later replaced by Jens Elo Rytter. In the fall of 2007, a cabinet reorganization in the Liberal-Conservative Government led to a reorganization of the legal body responsible for the recognition of minority denominations. Thus the judicial process, including the expert committee, was transferred to the Department of Justice under the Section of Family Affairs. Since 2014, jurisdiction is under the Ministry of Child, Equality, Integration and Social Affairs, Permanent Under-Secretarial Department, Office of Family Affairs. This paper will describe the judicial and pragmatic aspects of our deliberations. Furthermore, a few key cases will be described which demonstrate how the recognition process sometimes influences the negotiation of religious identity among applicant denominations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, including the UK, the potential of international student achievement surveys such as TIMSS and PISA is being subverted by political and media fixation on the resulting league tables. These prompt not just well-founded efforts to learn from others' success but also ill-founded assertions about educational cause and effect, inappropriate transplanting of the policies to which success is attributed, and even the reconfiguring of entire national curricula to respond less to national culture, values and needs than to the dubious claims of 'international benchmarking' and 'world class' educational standards - the latter equated with test scores in a limited spectrum of human learning. Informing such responses are the attractively simple nostrums of high profile and highly selective literature reviews that massage policymakers' urge for the quick fix by playing down the complex interplay of culture and schooling and ignoring the kinds of evidence that can provide a truer and more nuanced picture of education systems in action. Using a typology developed by the US National Research Council, the paper critiques three recent and influential examples of this paradigm before illustrating an alternative approach. This draws on the author's comparative studies of culture and pedagogy to show how explicating the principles that underpin observed classroom practice, rather than copying national policies, can lead to genuine transformation of the quality and outcomes of student learning. The paper ends by contending that PISA panic and the supremacist mindset it feeds have dangerously distorted the debate about what a 'world class' education should entail. With PISA 2012 now in progress, policymakers are urged to redress the balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In terms of infrastructure and technology, the media environment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories developed extensively between the first and second Intifadas. Yet the media environment of the second Intifada was not necessarily more conducive to democratic change than that of the first. This paper argues that technological advances must be evaluated in their political contexts, and that the Palestinian context offers insight into what news media can do when they are not necessarily forums for an effective public sphere. For decades, Palestinians have assembled their media world out of other states' media, and a diverse collection of small and large media. This active process of assembly has itself constituted a productive field of political contestation. During the first Intifada, having no broadcast media or uncensored newspapers, Palestinians relied on small media like graffiti to evade Israeli restrictions. During the Oslo period, the Palestinian Authority (PA) established official Palestinian broadcast media, while Palestinian entrepreneurs opened broadcasting stations and Internet news sites. During the second Intifada, with Palestinian news media hampered by continued PA restrictions and intensified Israeli violence, small and new media enabled networks of care and connection, but were not widely effective tools for political organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which participatory media function as tools for youth expression, empowerment, activism, and advocacy in Palestine. I argue that, first, youth media provide opportunities for creative expression and civic engagement in spaces in which youth participation is often marginalized. Secondly, youth media offer alternative information sources to potentially challenge dominant discourses of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally and the roles of Palestinian youth specifically. However, youth media practitioners, especially those from outside the community, often face the challenge of preserving the very youth agency that they aim to promote. It is thus necessary to be aware of the power dynamics implicit in such projects, even when adopting a pluralist approach. I begin by identifying the diverse approaches to youth media emerging in Palestine, and then examine the influence of youth media at the individual, community, regional, and international levels. I then discuss some of the limitations of youth media initiatives, and emphasize the importance of local ownership and youth participation. The findings are based on fieldwork conducted in the West Bank from 2006 to 2008, including interviews, surveys, program evaluations, and participant-observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of their 'War on Terror', Washington policy makers launched a massive public diplomacy campaign hoping to 'gain Muslim hearts and minds.' Their efforts, including the production of advertisements and documentaries, culminated with the inauguration of Al-Hurra, a commercial-free satellite station broadcasting in Arabic. Despite the substantial amount of money poured into it, Al-Hurra's success was strongly questioned among media scholars and US policy experts. And yet, Al-Hurra has generated very little academic research testing its effectiveness as an instrument of public diplomacy. This article reports the results of a survey administered in seven Lebanese universities to assess the performance of Al-Hurra among the country's college students. More specifically, it examines Al-Hurra's viewership, credibility, and trustworthiness in comparison to Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. The paper also tests the relation between Al-Hurra's viewership and audience attitude toward the United States. Findings show that Al-Hurra's viewership is considerably lower than Al-Jazeera's and Al-Arabiya's. Its credibility is also lower than that of its two Arab counterparts. Finally, Al-Hurra viewership did not predict a positive attitude toward the USA. The study raises questions about public diplomacy tools in general and Al-Hurra in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What has motivated the general hostility towards Dennett's most recent book? Which criticisms should we accept as valid? This paper examines some of the most vociferous attacks on Breaking the Spell which appeared in newspapers and online blogs soon after it was published. More specifically, it considers the question of whether a defense of atheism ought to be coupled with advocacy for the naturalistic (i.e., scientific) study of religion. Further, it addresses the meaning of the oft-made claim that evolution "equals" atheism, and whether the notion constitutes a political red herring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study posits that advocacy NGOs are successfully creating soft power using relational, network-centric public diplomacy. The United States, on the other hand, struggles to wield its soft power and continues to apply the outdated information, media-driven approach to its public diplomacy efforts. This article suggests that a public diplomacy strategy that tailors itself to the dynamics of the international context will prove most effective in achieving its tactical goals. The first section highlights changes in the international arena since the end of the Cold War and their corresponding impact on communication dynamics. The second section delineates the critical features that define mass communication and the network communication approach. The third examines specific applications of both communication approaches, drawing on examples from the US's post-'9/11' public diplomacy in the Arab world and those from advocacy NGOs. The paper concludes with implications of the differences between wielding versus creating soft power for state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review of how dolphins are portrayed in popular media (including literature, film, television, and music) reveals four themes that may influence public acceptance of current scientific research into dolphin cognition. These themes are: (a) dolphin as peer to humans, of equal intelligence or at least capable of communicating with or helping humans; (b) the dolphin as the representation of a romantic notion of ideal freedom in nature, embodying principles of peace, harmony or love; (c) the dolphin as a naïve, innocent being that is subordinate and in need of human protection; and (d) the dolphin as superior to humans, potentially affiliating with a higher power or intelligence. This review revealed that the use of dolphins in humor reinforced or lampooned the four identified themes, indicating a common acceptance of these themes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance of considering popular narratives in the presentation of scientific research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of papers on communication and social development in Asia. "Communication for Social Change and Action in Development," is one of those research papers by Ronny Adhikarya. This paper points out that certain political and institutional factors greatly influence the design and effectiveness of communication strategy in rural development. "The Role of Mass Media in the Development of Southeast Asia," is a collection of papers presented at the ASEAN Mass Media seminar, held in Manila, Philippines--aimed at stimulating mass media in Southeast Asia to a greater understanding of the problems of development in the region as well as of the prospects of regional action as a strategy for their solution. "Social Development in Singapore: A Selected Bibliography," is a bibliography compiled by Peter S.J. Chen and Ching-Ling Tai. This bibliography is a guide to the study of various aspects of social development in Singapore with an emphasis on recent publications.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the use of mass media by immigrant women in Korea and their capacity to form and build social capital, centering on their use of media such as; television, newspapers and the Internet. To achieve this research goal, the concept of social capital was reviewed and the relationship between trust, civic engagement and socio-political participation, which are components of social capital, were investigated. The study (n=335) measured the effects of consuming major media types on the formation of social capital within the sample population and identified the relationship between generic consumption patterns associated with individual media and the formation of social capital. In addition, this paper sheds light on the notion that a person's socio-demographic background affects the formation and building of social capital and that trust and civic engagement affects socio-political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, former Austrian vice-chancellor's H.C. Strache's resignation speech and its media coverage in Austria, Germany, and the German speaking part of Switzerland are investigated. Strache resigned after the publication of a secretly recorded meeting with an alleged Russian oligarch during which he (and his closest political collaborator) discussed illegal ways of party funding. The analysis shows that Strache applies justifications (presenting him as victim of a plot) as well as excuses (presenting his demeanor as the normal behavior of a drunken male) in his resignation speech. These seemingly contradictory framing strategies, however, are shown to fit both into the right-wing populist rhetoric repertoire. Analysis of the media coverage of the speech shows country specific differences although media in all three countries did not adopt Strache's framing strategies. The article also discusses the merits of integrating different data sources and methods in contrastive socio-pragmatic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses new developments in the field of literary theory and literary praxis in the era of new media from the perspectives of media theory and interology. It takes new media as a McLuhanesque formal cause and holds that a conspicuous characteristic of literary works in the era of new media lies in the salience and normalization of interality. This development means art forms like mosaic and Pointillism have acquired a paradigmatic significance as a result. In revealing this new paradigm, the article also points to some current social maladies that have come with new media. It holds that literary writing should go beyond the mere embodiment of symptoms and make an intervention in media-induced maladies. The article affirms the irreplaceability of experimental literature and serious literature in an era of attention deficit, and points out that form should occupy a paramount position in literary theory, literary criticism, and literary praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts from the Afrika-Studiecentrum in Lieden, the Netherlands which includes a research on the political power in Mozambique, teh construction of public images of Muslim scholars in the Nigerian media and a research on the Arabic Study Circle.

In a linguistically heterogeneous country, one of the critical challenges is to make information accessible to all people. Various communication media can be used: television, radio, telephone, the Internet and others. Malawi needs to embrace Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to achieve development in all spheres of human life. Malawi's use of ICTs ranks low. The critical challenge, therefore, is to promote an increased use of ICTs with the aim of improving people's access to information. Given that only a minority of Malawians have access to ICTs, that television has not significantly penetrated into rural areas where 80 % of the population lives, and that there is also a high illiteracy rate, the radio becomes the most accessible form of technology for information dissemination in Malawi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the function of Dead Sea Scrolls in popular culture. Information on the reputation of scrolls scholars; Role of the mass media; Significance of partial understanding of the importance of the discovery of earlier versions of ancient writings on the scrolls' function.

Proposes a solution for addressing the problem concerning the demarcation of book history which was exacerbated by digital developments. Implications of the emergence of the World Wide Web in 1991 for other forms of media; Concept of bibliography; Textual critics who have stressed the need to include the digital element in any study of textual transmission.

Modern market-driven mass media systems may present collective actors with communication opportunities, but these come laced with formidable costs and constraints. This paper argues that despite these barriers, collective actors, working intentionally and strategically, can develop effective media campaigns to communicate with mass audiences – audiences they cannot reach directly. To utilize these narrow opportunities, however, a collective actor needs both adequate communications infrastructure and a communication strategy well integrated into its overall organizing strategy. The 1997 Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service (U.P.S.) provides an illustrative case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the success or failure of development depends on the availability of technology in South African media and communication. Limitation in the access to South African communications and information technologies; Need for the establishment of community-based communication systems; Association between communication and development relationship.

The article examines the development of Malay editorial cartoons. The role of editorial cartoons as the documentation of current events became increasingly noticeable in contemporary Malaysian newspapers. Aside from providing some kind of momentary focus or acting as pictorial journalists by providing a graphic commentary on the goings of the world, Malay editorial cartoons can also be used as a source to understand contemporary Malaysian economic and socio-political culture. The history of Malay editorial cartoons is described. The works published in major national papers, including Warta Jenaka, Utusan Zaman and Majlis, is presented.

This article outlines the film practice of Gotot Prakosa (1955–2015), which he called film pinggiran (film of the edges, excentric film), and its relationships with the hegemony exerted by the Indonesian New Order government in the 1970s and 1980s. By examining Gotot's film works and extensive reflections on film-making, this article elucidates the dual characteristic of film pinggiran as a spatial and theoretical principle that orientates an excentric drive in the production and circulation of film. The article suggests that the film practice realized both an analysis of, and contradiction to, New Order mass media infrastructures and superstructures, thus engendering an ideological strike on the reproduction of the hegemony of the New Order. Film pinggiran thus does not necessarily 'push the boundary' further away; instead, it makes the edge the manifest content itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Herbert Schiller long ago observed, the mainstream (corporate) media (MSM) in the US have long been instruments of state power. However, since the nineteenth century, the reading public has relied on the news media as a pillar, albeit flawed, of a liberal democratic society. While the public still regards a "free press" as essential to democracy, it no longer has confidence that the mainstream media deserve that status. Trust levels in the MSM have plummeted since the 1970s, reflecting a larger pattern of distrust of public and private institutions in general, including the US Congress. Even many media professionals themselves do not see the US as defending the freedom of investigative journalism. Moreover, the quality of corporate media, more owner-concentrated than ever, has declined, often to the level of tabloid spectacle, as profit-oriented news departments try to compete with a wide array of 24/7 news platforms, including those coming from social media. The era of neoliberalism has all but eliminated the public service ideology behind news and public affairs reporting, and concurrently there has emerged a crisis of state legitimacy that threatens the foundations of the liberal democratic order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1956, American researchers Horton and Wohl coined the term "para-social interaction," defined as the bond of intimacy that a consumer of media feels towards the "image" of the performer. Later developed into the notion of "celebrity worship" by researchers, "parasociality" has a relationship to the worshipful dynamics of totemism—in which the image of the animal exceeds the actual being in sacredness—as described by French sociologist Émile Durkheim. Discussing French author Jean Genet's exploration of the unlikely forms of totemic worship common in the age of mass media, this article posits that Genet's "parasociology of religion" demonstrates the way in which Durkheimian sociology of religion can offer insight into ostensibly secular contemporary practices, including those of fan communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Charlie Hebdo' affair caused major repercussions in Senegal, not least because President Macky Sall took part in the "march in support of republican values" in Paris on Sunday 11 January 2015. Sall came in for fierce criticism for sympathising with the enemies of Islam. This article analyses the different attitudes expressed in the public demonstrations over the ensuing weeks, as well as in the accompanying media debate. Reactions were not unconnected with a profound ambivalence towards France, manifested in another public debate around the Fifteenth Assembly of the 'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie' (OIF) held in Dakar just weeks before. They were also affected by local politics, with the opposition seizing the opportunity to discomfit Sall. Also everywhere in play were local Islamic dynamics, particularly Sall's on-going difficulties with Senegal's principal religious families and resistance to his efforts to modernise traditional koranic schools ('daaras'). Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an exploration of media and gender in urban and peri-urban China during the 1950s and early 1960s – specifically, the persistent trope of the “hooligan,” or liumang. Since at least the late imperial period, Chinese authorities had feared unmarried, impoverished, rootless men as the main source of crime, disorder, and outright rebellion. Yet such figures were simultaneously celebrated as knights-errant for their violent heroism in cultural works of enormous popularity across regions and classes. As the ruling Chinese Communist Party attempted to reshape society and culture after 1949, it condemned knight-errant tales and made hooliganism a crime. At the same time, the state tried to promote a new pantheon of vigilante-like men in the guise of revolutionary heroes. But the state’s control over deeply rooted cultural markets and their products was incomplete. Moreover, the same potent tools that had empowered the Party, in particular its rhetoric of revolutionary subjectivity and its harnessing of modern media technologies, were open as never before to being adopted by the very targets of its efforts at control and censure. Marginal masculinity in the early PRC, though in many ways continuous with that in China during the previous decades and centuries, marked a new epoch: men and boys deemed hooligans were able to speak out and defend themselves as heroes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To punish Russia for the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, the United States and the European Union introduced a set of economic sanctions against Russian state companies and individuals closely affiliated with the Kremlin. The goal of this article is to look at the sanctions in relation to the process of the current consolidation of media assets and revenues in the hands of Russia's biggest media empires, most of whom are close to the Kremlin. It questions whether the sanctions achieved the intended goal of undermining economic stability inside Russia or if, rather, they benefitted major state-aligned media corporations. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that the international sanctions have radically changed the structure of Russia's media in a manner contrary to their intention. The sanctions unwittingly favored the biggest players to the detriment of the smaller, protecting state-aligned media and their financial incomes. In the climate of sanctions, media tycoons close to the Kremlin used their lobbying capacity in parliament to acquire advantages, primarily in terms of advertisement. Thus, smaller competitors were pushed out of the market and their shares were redistributed among a few major stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media managers are key in the relations between, on the one side the authorities, to whom they enjoy privileged access, and, on the other side the newsroom, the functioning of which they define. Contrary to the popular view, held both in Russia and abroad, that the Kremlin controls the majority of the country's media, we argue that media managers have a fair bit of agency and are players in their own rights, able to shape their audiences' attitudes and modify individual as well as collective behavior. To be able to exert this power they must, however, tread a very fine line: they have to demonstrate adekvatnost' (literally adequacy, but better translated as appropriateness, or 'the right feel for the game') and demand adekvatnost' from their journalists and editors. Focusing on two dimensions – elite theory and the concept of adekvatnost' – this article analyses the data gleaned from interviews with a range of media managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smashing initial hopes for more radical and speedier changes in Russia, elements of the Soviet system of managerial and ideological control proved to be obstinately persistent. Certain practices reminiscent of the informal functioning of the Soviet nomenklatura continue unabated primarily in politics, but also in Russian media. This article argues that nomenklatura practices are still a fixed part in organization management in Russian media today, securing the loyalty of journalists and controlling the output of the news media. The analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews and three case studies, scrutinizing media managers' professional biographies, directs to a non-intuitive development; namely, that it is not necessarily those who have experienced the Soviet nomenklatura closely and in person who were most active in applying and perpetuating nomenklatura practices, but also those who were either remote from these power structures or too young. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses media discussions around three film projects of the 2000s and 2010s, interpreting the figure of field marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim from the point of view of Bourdieuan social aesthetics and civil religion. Mannerheim is a central part of Finnish civil religious concentration of symbols--that is symbols associated to the Finnish nation. This article analyses different actors' strategies of classification, legitimisation, de-legitimisation, and evaluation in relation to the three film projects. These socio-aesthetic strategies reflect the positions and competitive environment of the Finnish media field. Civil religious concentration of symbols and their connected aesthetic practices work as resources for media power and for classificatory power, and media competition creates a new kind of visibility for these civil religious symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]