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Objectives: The portrayal of mental health in the mainstream news media is an important topic for discussion. Concerns about stigmatisation of those suffering from mental ill-health have been expressed for many years, leading to numerous anti-stigma campaigns. Previous Irish studies demonstrated an improvement in the tone and content of articles over time. This study aims to re-evaluate this topic, 19 years after it was last studied. Methods: Four Irish papers including the tabloid, broadsheet, online and compact paper with the highest readership were analysed daily for a 12-week period. Using pre-determined definitions based on previous studies, all articles or headlines incorporating psychiatry-related material were examined for tone, content, utilisation of terminology, reference to self-harm, suicide and violence. Results: In total, 735 articles (2.19/paper/day) were identified and analysed. The majority of articles were found to have a supportive or factual tone. A higher proportion of judgemental or sensationalist articles were found in the tabloid newspaper. An improvement was noted compared to previous Irish studies. A decrease in articles written by mental health professionals was noted. Only 5% of articles portrayed psychotic disorders, with many of these referring to violence. Compliance with relevant guidelines for reporting of suicide was good overall. Conclusion: There has continued to be an improvement in the tone and content of articles since previous Irish studies. The introduction of guidelines within this time may have played a significant role. Psychotic illness received limited coverage and was more likely to be portrayed in a stigmatising manner, guidelines relating to this could be of benefit. Engagement between psychiatrists and the media is important to improve the portrayal of psychotic illness and enhance awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of The Australian in 1964 now appears prescient: it coincided with and contributed to the rise in national political consciousness inaugurated in the 1960s that has continued ever since. Integral to this process has been a far more powerful sense of the nation and a weakening in state consciousness. History suggests that the culture and the technology were ready for a national newspaper. This article examines several critical political events or themes, how The Australian saw them and the extent to which it shaped or failed to shape the nation's mood. This involves an assessment of how both the nation and the paper changed over half a century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical analysis of media discourse on a corporate restructuring case in the pulp and paper industry in Finland. The analysis indicates that discursive struggles over the legitimacy of corporate restructuring initiatives, especially industrial shutdowns, are highly contextual processes, deeply embedded in the socio-historical specificities of the locations where they occur. Legitimation of the various restructuring measures is a political and a fundamentally historical process. It is argued that analyses of legitimation strategies need to deploy a processual, historical approach to be able to effectively engage with the practice of legitimation. The importance of, and the differences in, nationalist discourses in securing or challenging the legitimacy for drastic restructuring measures is analysed in the specific context of Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study based on the growth of mass media insatiability for sexual material, and the enduring suspicions between the sexes when it comes to sexuality and sexual pleasure. It mentions that suspicions about women's sexual purity continue to feature as central expression of mistrust in cultures with obvious gender inequality, dowry demands, men's honor entitlements, and virginity tests.

When Rupert Murdoch announced in April 2004 that he intended to see his company, News Corporation, reincorporated in the United States, two competing representations of the 'media mogul' came to dominate the press's interpretation of this event. The first of these 'Murdoch representations' was the most common, and painted an image of a successful entrepreneur, a 'celebrity CEO'. Yet, the second 'Murdoch representation' painted a different image, a more detailed portrait, with critical attention paid to the modus operandi of the world's most notorious media proprietor. This article deconstructs these representations of Murdoch, a mythic fracturing of image resulting from the political economy of the Australian press. In essence, the article explores issues of media diversity, myth and ideology, and the propensity of the press for critical, impartial, journalism. The empirical data are drawn from an analysis of two of Australia's pre-eminent newspapers: The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the social theoretical foundations of a sociology of media and communication by making use of the cultural–historical school in psychology. Such perspective gains relevance in digital capitalism and the blurring of production and Internet usage. The paper first revisits Habermas's influential notion of communicative action and agency. Second, it uses activity theory as an alternative, more promising way of theorising because it links communication closer to work. A model of communicative action is introduced and a conceptual link between media and human tool use is established. Third, the paper elaborates on the notion of activity in the digital world and posits that digitalisation can be understood as a 'machinisation' of mental and communicative-coordinative work. The developed perspective, the paper concludes, allows critical media and communication sociology to operate with meaningful concepts of communicative expropriation, exploitation and alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journal publication has long been relied on as the only required communication of results, tasking journalists with bringing news of scientific discoveries to the public. Output of science papers increased 15% between 1990 and 2001, with total output over 650,000. But, fewer than 0.013-0.34% of papers gained attention from mass media, with health/medicine papers taking the lion's share of coverage. Fields outside of health/medicine had an appearance rate of only 0.001-0.005%. In light of findings that show scientific literacy declining despite growing public interest and scientific output, this study attempts to show that reliance on journal publication and subsequent coverage by the media as the sole form of communication en masse is failing to communicate science to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as the Frankfurt School responded to the radicalisation of the working class in Germany and the rise of post-war consumerism in the United States, today, we are confronted by platform monopolies, automated hyper-consumption and technological control. Critical approaches to digital media have exposed the structural coupling of Internet use and capital accumulation for almost two decades. However, many authors building on this tradition can struggle to understand how online social interaction is controlled beyond the worn-out critique of false consciousness or beyond conceptualising all digital activity mediated by data as labour. This paper will attempt to theoretically untangle the Marxian ontology of labour and the Frankfurt School-inspired critique of everyday life. This is not just theoretical nit-picking. Society becomes completely dominated if we accept no difference between wage labour and lifeworld activities. Each contains its internal struggles. The value form regulates both in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas the structure of the broadcasting system in the newly formed eastern states very much resembles the structure in the western states, the local and regional print media markets in the newly formed German states today still resemble the situation in the German Democratic Republic in that the dominating newspapers are the ones that already dominated before 1989. These papers were taken over by West German publishers in 1989. But the great majority of journalists working in the newly formed states today had already been working as journalists there before the Wall came down. However, a content analysis including 10 papers from the newly formed states and 10 from the West German states reveals only minor differences between papers from the eastern and the western parts of Germany. Journalists in the newly formed states were a bit more careful about voicing their opinions. Only the number of some political main actors and their evaluations differed to any great extent between eastern and western papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with similar research mainly focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Australian mainstream media using discourse analysis, this paper explores the reasons for the narrative shift by conducting semi-structured interviews with leading and well-known Australian narrative producers. This paper takes two conditions as a given. Firstly, the BRI narratives in Australian mainstream media shifted in tone from mostly positive to highly critical. Secondly, the Australian mainstream media's increasingly negative attitudes towards the BRI are essentially not just about the BRI but the Chinese government. Based on my analysis and interviews, this paper makes contributions by filling in the gap of finding out reasons to explain this narrative shift. More concretely, this paper finds out that while mainstream media is influential in many areas of national policy making, mainstream media reporting on foreign affairs is less so. By comparison, the Australian government's BRI or China policy has a significant impact on Australian mainstream media reporting. This narrative shift has been driven by international politics and Australia's China policy, influenced by Australian audiences' preference of local news and their local position, and its democratic responsibilities. Meanwhile, the vagueness and constant changing characteristics of the BRI do not help the understanding of the BRI in Australian media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the audience reception of sensationalist newspapers in interwar Australia through a case study of Sydney weekly Beckett's Budget. During a libel trial brought against Beekett's in 1928, readers came to its defence and their testimony reveals overlaps between reading and political allegiances: reading Beckett's equated with voting Labor While histories of sensationalist media in Australia have rightly emphasised illicit sexuality and public outcry, connections between sensationalism and working-class political movements remain on the margins of academic interest. Responding to the question 'Do you read Beckett's?' readers' evidence at the trial constitutes an audience response and invites debate over the ways gender and class could inform political engagement in the 1920s. Viewing Beckett's Budget outside of 'brown paper' and beyond the sensationalist genre reveals a shift in Australian political culture as party strategists embraced a broader electorate, using Beckett's Budget to tap into the culture and concerns of interwar society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the decline of British national newspapers. It says that the main factors affecting the decline are the actions made by the proprietors, unions and the government. It states that unreasonable pricing, market positioning, unreliable image because of strikes, and worsening distribution networks were among contributors to the deteriorating condition of the industry. It offers several actions and recommendations that proprietors should adopt in order to save the industry, which includes cutting of production and operating costs, persuading the unions to accept full automation, and moving some or all of the papers to one or more printing plants in England. It mentions the idea of entering to a joint operating agreements to keep the papers.

The article offers information related to mass media policy in Sweden wherein the first press law was created in 1766. It states that the press law policy in the country has five characteristics including the freedom of establishment, prohibition of censorship, and the protection of informants. It mentions that the provision of all-round information, transmission of communication, and control of those in power are among the four essential functions of media. Moreover, it discusses the press development and the press production subsidies.

Economic success as a large national daily newspaper and a progressive editorial policy are normally incompatible in the highly commercialized media sector of contemporary capitalist societies. Despite this, a South Korean newspaper, Hankyoreh Shinmun, pursued these two goals simultaneously, relying on public support and employment of the same financial resources as those of the commercial papers (i.e. advertising revenue and subscription fees). This project was based on an unusual social situation in which a significant number of the middle classes hold progressive views. The prime purpose of this thesis is to examine the reconciliation of these two goals. The findings indicate that it is possible for the progressive media to launch and continue within a highly industrialized media sector according to certain political characteristics of the middle classes in particular societies. The united economic capability of the progressive middle classes makes it possible to raise the high launch costs; their readership makes it possible to secure the core resources from the advertising revenue; their continuous contributions help fund operating costs after its foundation. The conclusion we arrived at is that the strength of economic barriers against the progressive media vary according to certain sociopolitical features of particular societies and the different political attitudes of the social classes. The economic determination is decisive but not absolute. The article also considers the decision-making process of dispersed ownership. The results show that the combination of the large number of shareholders required to launch a large independent paper, and the egoism of the founding leaders which occurred in a power vacuum situation, resulted in the domination of the paper by a small number of executives. This situation led to a split between the company and the public owners, and weakened the financial and political strength of the paper. This fact demands a re... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite mixed emotions about COVID-19 vaccination as a precondition for international travel, COVID-19 vaccination is being advocated as one of the instruments that could facilitate safe free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, the purpose of the present research is to distinguish the underlying mechanisms that could predict individuals' intentions to take the COVID-19 vaccine as a precondition for international travel. The conceptual framework was built on the extended theory of reasoned action (TRA), which incorporates mass media coverage, travel motivations, and previous travel experience. An online purposive sampling technique was utilized in this study, and 1188 responses were collected. Subsequently, structural equation modeling was utilized to test the proposed model. The originality of the present study lies with unraveling the mechanisms that affect the intention to take the COVID-19 vaccine as a precondition for international travel. In addition, the discussions are presented in subsequent sections of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates readers' perceptions of Idikelethu newspaper as a tool for community development, particularly in Alice, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data was collected from two focus group discussions that were held in the areas where Idikelethu newspaper has high readership rates. The findings revealed that development-related issues such as health awareness, education and community safety, among others, are regularly addressed by this community newspaper. Based on the findings and analysis of data, this study concludes that Idikelethu newspaper contributes in many ways to the development of its readers and Alice community in general. It is anticipated that the findings of this paper will play an important role in assisting Idikelethu and other community newspapers to function better as agents of community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the contemporary and historical perspective of English language mass media in Malaysia. It says that the first newspaper in the country was published in English. It mentions that "The Government Gazette of Penang," which served as house organ of the foreigners, established by merchant and auctioneer A. B. Bone on March 1, 1806 under certain conditions made by East India Co. to grant publishing permit. It states that English-language newspapers have governmental and political pressures since 1970, primarily newspaper ownership. Furthermore, the "Straits Times" Press was the first to comply the local ownership of Malaysian newspaper called by the United Malays National Organization.

This paper examines the visual representation of the refugee child in digital news media in Cyprus at two historical moments of significant immigration rise in Europe as a result of violent conflict: the period of May 2015-2016 and February 2022-2023. The analysis showed that refugee children were portrayed in ways which led to their de/humanization. However, differences in the language, themes, and visual grammar applied gave way to the emergence of a hierarchy of refugee child subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the credibility of opinion polls, and for whom? Opinion polls assessing voting intention are an increasingly prominent aspect of pre-election media discourse, yet they often vary in terms of their estimations, who conducted the poll, and where the poll is ultimately published. This research note considers the determinants of pre-election poll credibility when citizens are exposed to conflicting polls, contributing to a growing field which considers the subjectivity with which partisan-relevant information is perceived in polarised contexts. Using a conjoint analysis in Turkey, this paper produces strong evidence that polls are perceived differently across partisan lines. Whereas government supporters rely almost exclusively on a poll's result, opposition supporters place considerably more weight on the media source when determining poll credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As interlocutors in national level discourse with the power to influence public opinion and inform policy, the news media are an important data source in understanding the constitutive roles played by culture and discourse in shaping health experiences and outcomes. This paper reports on a critical discourse analysis of news media coverage of HIV in the Republic of Ireland between 2006 and 2016. This period is significant because of the considerable increase in new HIV diagnoses that occurred in Ireland after the 2008 recession. Analysis of articles (n = 103) demonstrated a pattern of dividing practices whereby people living with or affected by HIV were frequently positioned as somatically and morally deficient via discourses of risk and responsibility. Little focus was given over to examination of the structural drivers of HIV, occluding the social context of the epidemic. The findings suggest that media discourses on HIV have the potential to other people living with HIV and generate stigma by invoking a dynamic of blame and shame frequently implicated in the stigma process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequitable access to education is a widely acknowledged development challenge, an issue even more pronounced in conflict-affected communities like Afghanistan, where insecurity and violence targeted against education exacerbates barriers that keep children, especially girls, from going to school. To address these challenges, Baghch-e-Simsim (BSS), a locally produced children's television show, has focused on academic skills and gender equity for children and their families in Afghanistan. This paper will analyze the impact of BSS on the views of gender norms of children and parents using data from two studies: a nationally representative quasi-experimental evaluation of 3025 TV-viewing households and an in-depth qualitative encourage-to-view study of twenty households in Kabul. Overall findings will show that families who frequently view BSS have more gender equitable beliefs. Findings will also show that there is variability among parents on the appropriateness of boys and girls playing together outside, largely driven by security concerns rather than cultural gender norms. Recommendations will focus on the importance of continuing to create mass media content for young children that supports gender equity, but that content must also begin to reflect and address the security concerns facing parents that keep girls out of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article expresses views on a summary of paper presented by Richard Smith, editor of the "British Medical Journal." The editor addressed the issues of relationships between medical journals and the media, conflicts of interest and the possibility of insider trading by journal staff and reviewers through access to unpublished price-sensitive information. It also stresses the need for further discussion on ownership of shares by journal editors and referees.

This paper explores the role of media among different generations of non-straight men. Based on generational theory, combining the notions of "queer generations" and "media generations," it empirically explores the role of both legacy and digital media in the processes of sexual identity formation in four post-war generations (Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z). A mixed-method approach was used, combining a quantitative survey (N = 684) to measure the importance of different media with in-depth interviews (N = 80) to better understand the role of media in relation to sexual identity. The results show significant generational differences in the importance of media used at the time of sexual identity exploration as well as in the past year. Digital media became increasingly important for the younger generations but also play a key role in the sexual lives of older participants, while film and television remain important sources of representation, across all generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper problematises the difficulty of defining the public value of public service media. Through a double qualitative methodology, a series of components are identified and assessed in order to propose a tenable conceptualisation in the European framework. First, a qualitative analysis of the main legislations in force (n = 44) and the grey literature public service media organisations display on their websites (n = 14) was developed to extract, on an exploratory basis, the common constituent components of public value. Based on this, we developed a guided focus group of experts (n = 15) to help us build a conception of public service media's value that can retain its validity for a long period of time in the multiplatform era. The results highlight the problems in proposing a single definition given the socio-political diversity of the spaces in which public service media operate and the uncertainty of a constantly changing audiovisual context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Far-right populist parties instrumentalize the media and intervene into processes of mediatization in significantly different ways, depending on socio-political contexts, their position of power, their role in government or opposition and – related to the latter – their specific access to media. In this paper, I focus on one of the many ways propagandistic tools are employed to control the relevant agenda and information being disseminated by both traditional media and online, in other words 'message control'. Message control illustrates one of many steps of normalization of far-right agenda. The concept of 'message control' emerged from the specific propaganda tool developed by the former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his followers and implies launching and thus controlling select information via weekly press conferences, briefings, personal conversations, back-ground conversations (Hintergrundgespräche), and text messages, and to financially subsidize only those media that reported favorably about the activities of Kurz's government. Thus, a new media logic based on favoritism, nepotism, and clientelism was established and normalized. This stands in contrast to Trumpism, which delegitimized all investigative journalism without explicitly attempting to control it. Former US President Donald Trump constitutes rather a prime example of Löwenthal and Guterman', as he instrumentalized far-right and extreme-right media channels (such as Breitbart or Fox News) and extensively used Twitter to spread systematic disinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of The Australian on Canberra from its first issue on 15 July 1964 to the move to Sydney on 18 March 1967. It covers the acquisition of the Territorial; the change of ownership of Federal Capital Press to the Fairfax organisation; the battle with the Canberra Times for dominance in the local market; the impact of the influx of journalists on a previously static news scene; their impact on Press Gallery reporting; and the impact of more penetrating reporting on the public service. These themes are developed against the background of a city enjoying a burst of development. The article draws on the author's experience as a journalist with the ABC in the Press Gallery in Canberra in the 1960s, as a contributor to The Australian, as a writer/editor for Maxwell Newton, as a citizen and as honorary secretary for the Canberra Day Celebrations 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent international trends towards urban consolidation, intended to reduce outward urban sprawl by concentrating growth within existing neighbourhoods, can cause contention in cities. Understanding how the mass media represents urban consolidation can lead to more informed and democratic planning practices. This paper employs Social Representations Theory to identify and understand representations of urban consolidation in newspaper media. The theory recognises that the media is a key purveyor of public discourse and can reflect, shape or suppress ideas circulating in society. This novel approach has not previously been applied to understanding social representations of urban consolidation strategies in the mass media. The rapidly growing and changing city of Brisbane, Australia, is utilised as a case study. Brisbane is situated in South East Queensland, the fastest growing region in Australia, and is governed by regional and local planning policies that strongly support increased densities in existing urban areas. Findings from a quantitative textual analysis of 449 articles published in Brisbane newspapers between 2007 and 2014 reveal key clusters and classes of co-occurring words that represent dominant social representations apparent in the newspaper corpus. The paper provides two key conclusions. The first is that social representations occurring in mass media represent an important source of information about ‘common sense’ understandings and evaluations of urban consolidation debates. The second is that urban consolidation is represented as a multifaceted issue, including interrelated themes of housing, sustainable population growth, investment strategies and the interplay between politics and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the possibility that electoral campaigning transmits truthful information in a situation where campaigning has a direct persuasive effect on a subset of the electorate called "naïve voters." To this end, we construct a multi-sender signaling game in which an incumbent and a challenger decide whether to focus on policy or ability in electoral campaigning, and a media outlet then decides whether to gather news. Voters are divided into sophisticated and naïve voters. We demonstrate that a candidate's strategy regarding their issues of focus (campaign messages) can signal his or her private information. Specifically, negative campaigning against the incumbent's ability signals the incumbent's low ability in all separating equilibria. It is also noteworthy that separating equilibria exist only when sophisticated and naïve voters coexist. This implies that a fraction of naïve voters has a non-monotonic effect on the possibility of transmitting truthful information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic reduction policies are important for addressing plastic pollution however, the success of such policies relies on establishing new social norms. This study advances knowledge on public expressions of social norms by exploring the interplay between news media and social media in response to a new environmental policy. It is the first study to explore this phenomenon with the explicit aim of identifying and comparing information related to social norms. A content analysis was conducted in relation to the 2018 Australian supermarket plastic bag ban. Results demonstrate how social norms related to a new policy are created, reinforced and expressed in the contemporary media landscape. The interaction between news media and social media offers a window into public expressions of social norms, where social media provides a platform for civic participation in a public and real-time environment in which users can challenge the dominant narrative presented by the news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon a growing interest in the impact of visual culture and the use of visual data within the health and social sciences, the introduction to this interdisciplinary collection of papers examines what visual methodologies and visual ‘evidence’ can bring to the study of social inequalities. It sets out the specific contributions by authors in order to identify their different methodological approaches, theoretical interests and analytical concerns and to explore the implications and possibilities of their visual methodologies for those researching and working in the policy arena. With a particular emphasis on the dialogues between context, text and image, the paper highlights the insights generated by the collection into the forms and experiences of inequality that have shaped and continue to shape societies, communities, families and individual lives. It also suggests how the visual might contribute to extending understanding of the ways social inequalities are imagined, constituted and reinforced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Digital technologies promise to transform practices of health, medicine and health care and 'power' economies. In expectation of their presumed future benefits, governments in recent years have invested heavily in new technology initiatives and have sought to engender 'digital literacy' among citizens. This article introduces papers and expands on themes arising from a special issue that explores the socio-ethical and regulatory implications of citizens' use of digital media to connect with health care. We set the scene by examining the promissory discourse that attaches to digital technologies as applied to health care, and its role in shaping actions, and then consider the longer term prospects and implications of digitalisation for conceptions of citizenship and established categories and distinctions. As we argue, given the history of new technologies, the longer term implications of digitalisation are likely to differ significantly from those envisaged. Digital technologies promise radical positive disruption. Yet many uncertainties accompany their development and future applications and likely implications. Making reference to papers in the special issue and the wider literature, the article considers the prospects of digitalisation in medicine and health care in light of the colonisation of the Internet by powerful technology companies, the shift in capitalist economies from processes of production to technologies of prediction, evidence of inequalities in access to the Internet and related devices, and the growing number of data breaches involving personal health information. We draw attention to the failure of governments to engage citizens in substantive deliberations about digitalisation and its future potential implications and the ultimate democratic deficit that this represents. We ask, what does it mean to 'regulate' digital media in a context in which data are widely viewed as the 'new oil'? While we have no straightforward answers, we suggest that recent legislative efforts (e.g. General Data Protection Regulation in Europe) and growing calls for 'algorithmic accountability' have the potential to temper the more harmful aspects of digitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese press, instead of acting purely as a state propaganda instrument, now functions as ‘Party Publicity Inc.’ — that is, a quasi-business that seeks to make huge profits on the one hand and to legitimate the Party mandate by promoting its image on the other. The accelerated pace of media conglomeration following China's accession to the World Trade Organization has sharpened this trend. This study examines the impact of press ecology in Shenzhen, a national trend-setter for ‘Party Publicity Inc.’, before and after conglomeration. We observe that press conglomeration has (a) engendered a more centralized management structure and operation; (b) replaced duopolistic competition with market monopoly and greater price-fixing abilities; (c) continued to rely on state office subscription; (d) dampened journalists' enthusiasm for political reform in favor of economic interest; (e) developed a two-tier Publicity Inc. to serve both the Party and the market; and (f) provided an opportunity for overseas expansion. Marketization does not trigger political reform, but pre-empts pressure for political change. The Party Publicity Inc. in its conglomerate form represents a complicitous accommodation between power and money engineered by a post-Communist bureaucratic-authoritarian regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on advertising and editorial independence in Canada. In the fall of 1919, a confidential pamphlet was circulated to members of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association proposing a new kind of advertising agency. The author was Gilbert M. Murray, a former general manager of the association. The advertising agency he proposed would not write copy, draft illustrations or even plan marketing campaigns--services that all competitive agencies were then providing, instead, Murray proposed that this new agency serve only as a counsel regarding the purchase of space in Canada's 1000 newspapers and magazines. Its criteria would be political. Its goal would be to prevent advertisers from using any periodical that advocated reciprocity with the United States, supported unions or attacked corporate Canada in any way. The "Murray scheme," as it became known, sat at the intersection of several trends in the Canadian advertising trade. Daily newspapers then enjoyed the highest circulation figures they had ever seen. National consumer magazines were enjoying their first taste of success.

As Australia's only national general newspaper, with an elite 'political class' audience, The Australian has been at the forefront of newspaper proprietors' attempts to influence media policy. This article analyses The Australian's reporting of two key media policy proposals affecting newspapers: the establishment of the Australian Press Council in 1975-76 and the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation (the Finkelstein inquiry) in 2012-13. While the events were 36 years apart, the paper's stance and rhetoric were remarkably similar. However, its approach to journalism and to providing information to its audience changed in several important respects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratization of public communication not only requires the institutional reorganization of the mass media, but also the adoption of new journalistic practices in political reporting. These practices include a new conception of the role of journalists in society and new standards of the quality of news reporting. This article takes the Izvestiya, one of Russia's quality papers, as an example to discuss the specific problems Russian print media are confronted with when struggling for independence. A quantitative content analysis of the political coverage of the Izvestiya, which compares front-page news in 1988 and 1996, elucidates how the paper informs its readers about political matters today and how the structure of news has changed over the last decade. The findings show the coexistence of old and new journalistic norms. There are clear signs of growing professionalization with the news becoming more factual, more timely and broader in the selection of topics. At the same time, we still find a high degree of subjective evaluations indicating the persistence of the historical legacy of Russian journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores which actors and factors influence media coverage of climate change in Russia. It does this by analysing the coverage of three events by five Russian national newspapers (Komsomol’skaya pravda, Rossiyskaya gazeta, Izvestiya, Kommersant and Sovetskaya Rossiya). The three events are the Kyoto Conference in 1997, the Copenhagen Conference in 2009 and the Russian heat-wave of 2010. This paper concludes that regardless of the ownership structure of the newspapers or their dependence on advertising, there is little difference in quantity and quality of overall coverage on climate change. With most newspapers relying on Russian officials as information sources, almost none criticise or question Russian climate policy. Furthermore, the article concludes that, in Russia, the omission of climate change issues from discussion in national newspapers becomes a greater problem than biased coverage, as the lack of commentary decidedly prevents these issues from entering the public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A 21st-century growth in prevalence of extreme right-wing nationalism and social conservatism in Australia, Europe, and America, in certain respects belies the positive impacts of online, new, and alternative forms of global media. Cross-national forms of 'far-right activism' are unconfined to their host nations; individuals and organisations campaign on the basis of ethno-cultural separatism, while capitalising on internet-based affordances for communication and ideological cross-fertilisation. Right-wing revolutionary ideas disseminated in this media, to this end, embody politico-cultural aims that can only be understood with attention to their philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on a dataset of articles from the pseudo-news websites, XYZ and The Unshackled, this paper investigates the representation of different rightist political philosophical traditions in contemporary Australia-based far-right media. A critical discourse and content analysis reveal XYZ and TU's engagement with various traditions, from Nietzsche and the Conservative Revolution, to the European New Right and neo-Nazism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the Alt-Right needs to be taken seriously by the liberal establishment, the general public, and leftist cultural elites for five main reasons: 1) its 'right-wing Gramscianism' borrows from the French New Right (Nouvelle Droite – ND) and the French and pan-European Identitarian movement. This means that it is engaged in the continuation of a larger Euro-American metapolitical struggle to change hearts and minds on issues related to white nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racialism; 2) it is indebted to the metapolitical evolution of sectors of the violent neo-Nazi and earlier white nationalist movements in the USA; 3) this metapolitical orientation uses the mass media, the internet, and social media in general to reach and influence the masses of Americans; 4) the 'cultural war' means that the Alt-Right's spokesman Richard Spencer, French ND leader Alain de Benoist, and other intellectuals see themselves as a type of Leninist vanguard on the radical right, which borrows from left-wing authors such as Antonio Gramsci and their positions in order to win the metapolitical struggle against 'dominant' liberal and left-wing political and cultural elites; and 5) this 'cultural war' is intellectually and philosophically sophisticated because it understands the crucial role of culture in destabilizing liberal society and makes use of important philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Schmitt, Julius Evola and others in order to give credence to its revolutionary, racialist, and anti-liberal ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to call for broader conceptual and more sophistocated methodological approaches to the study of the press in Communist systems, especially after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Through an empirical analysis of the world view of the Chinese regional press, the assumptions behind the conventional mass propaganda model were called into question and reexamined. Using the data collected from five Chinese regional newspapers before and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, this paper argues that the earlier mass propaganda and persuasion model cannot adequately address the fundamental changes in the structure and processes of the contemporary Chinese press as a result of China's domestic reform movement and its sustained opening to the West. The data also show that the failure to differentiate between two different concepts - foreign news vs. foreign policy news - in early studies could result in misleading interpretation and conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the mass media systems of Brunei and East Malaysia. It states that Brunei and East Malaysia's mass media represents an example of the different issues discoursed under the New International Information Order's rubric. It says that the newspapers of East Malaysia were challenged by the press problems in the third world countries such as overdependence on governmental information resources and insufficient materials, staff, and capital. It adds that the Bruneian television, on the other hand, serves as media and cultural submission's prime example to outside entities.

The history of print media in the Northern Territory is one of parish pumps and media moguls, Cold War tensions and human rights crusades. Locally printed and published newspapers have been pivotal to the development of a Northern Territory identity and the cultivation of the Territory's sense of difference from the rest of Australia. From the earliest newspapers - part news-sheet, part government gazette - to the colourful online edition of the NT News, the Territory has been defined by its press and has in turn defined it, in response to its remoteness and to its increasing non-Indigenous population. This article provides a brief overview of the Northern Territory press, the history of which remains poorly documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze mindfulness in education from a critical perspective. We first examine the historical underpinnings of human capital theory, which encourages educators to view students as efficient laborers in a neo-liberal society. Using the lens of Bourdieu's capital theory, we further examine how mass media inadvertently distorts the definition of mindfulness by exploring the development of a specific mass media story and by identifying how mass media factors beyond headlines and titles reframe mindfulness. We argue that this type of reframing has created a public perception of students who practice mindfulness as not only successful in social relationships but also as valued laborers who expand economic growth. This analysis opens two doors of discourse. First, mindfulness in education should be de-capitalized and shifted toward a spiritual focus. Second, we ask educational writers and publishers to redirect mindfulness applications away from their original purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes strategies for feature selection of digital news articles that allow an effective implementation of learning algorithms for the unsupervised classification of news articles. With the appropriate selection of a small subset of features a correct identification of related news can be achieved, thus enabling organizations and individual users to keep track of current events. The paper defines a quality measure of the discriminatory power of each feature and verifies that the selection of a feature subset with higher quality values allows obtaining good classification results. A Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based selection method is also proposed. Both proposals are validated on two collections of press clippings collated from news search services in digital media. Experimental results reveal that good classification accuracy can be achieved with small subsets of between 3 per cent and 6 per cent of the features. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this issue of Media Culture and Society is to discuss the possible role of social media in the struggle for democracy, against authoritarianism, and over hidden power structures. The articles included in this volume are meant to offer empirical interventions to beliefs, some of them unproven, on whether the emergence of new media technologies has driven Africa towards democratic change. Papers in this Special Issue cover a wide variety of African countries delving deep into comparative studies of participatory citizens' media on the continent. This introduction is an attempt to offer an explanation on African democratisation and authoritarianism before conceptualising the role of social media in political processes with the backing of current case study dispatches in Africa, demonstrating the dilemmas of digital disparities in promoting or denting democratisation in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of social media, political communication scholars have systematically revised theories and empirical corollaries revolving media use and democracy at large. Interestingly, in about the same period of time, a reinvigorated political populism trend has taken place across different latitudes in the world. This widespread populist movement has expanded regardless of whether these political systems were established democracies, emerging democracies, or societies immersed in political contexts at peril. This essay serves as the introductory piece to a special issue on populism. First, it highlights the ways in which "populism," being an old phenomenon, has further transpired into the political realm in the era of social media. Second, the essay seeks to better contextualize what populism is and how it has developed within today's hybrid media society. Finally, this introduction also lays out the ground to six central theoretical and data-driven papers that encapsulate many of the important issues revolving the phenomenon of populism today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular religious practices such as communicating with the deceased take place in many parts of the world. In cases of death through violence, as in warfare, the living worry about the dead bodies of their loved ones as the lack of bodily remains makes it impossible to perform a proper burial. Vietnam is a valuable case study because it has experienced terrible violence in the 20th century. This article explores the pilgrimage of a group of brothers who searched for the bodily remains of their father in the late 1990s. He operated as a secret agent and was killed in 1957 when he crossed the border into South Vietnam. In their quest, the brothers consulted a ritual expert, who guided them from a distance. Drawing on this case study, the paper argues that filial piety, spirit mediumship, technology, and political history are deeply intertwined in post-revolutionary and late socialist Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Media and Modernity, Thompson develops an interactional theory of communication media that distinguishes between three basic types of interaction: face-to-face interaction, mediated interaction, and mediated quasi-interaction. In the light of the digital revolution and the growth of the internet, this paper introduces a fourth type: mediated online interaction. Drawing on Goffman's distinction between front regions and back regions, Thompson shows how mediated quasi-interaction and mediated online interaction create new opportunities for the leakage of information and symbolic content from back regions into front regions, with consequences that can be embarrassing, damaging and, on occasion, hugely disruptive. The growing role of mediated quasi-interaction and mediated online interaction has reconstituted the political field so that political life now unfolds in an information environment that is much more difficult to control, creating a permanently unstable arena in which leaks, revelations and disclosures are always capable of disrupting the most well-laid plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the advancement of women in the mass media in Canada. Contemporary structure of the mass media; Cultural importance of the 'Toronto news war'; Consequences of enhancing the employment equality of women in the mass media.

Provides information on a study which discussed the United States media coverage of international news that presented major issues and actors in the 1994 South African elections. Theoritical framework; Methodology and findings.

This research note deals with the role of the media in assigning legitimacy to Germany's first participation in military action since the end of the Second World War. A content analysis of the war discourse in the editorials of the five leading German newspapers investigates the range of evaluations of the Kosovo war. Employing the concept of framing, a variety of competing diagnostic, prognostic and identity-related interpretations were identified. Controversial debate emerged around the procedural aspects of warfare. While the conservative papers emphasized the military options, the liberal papers directed attention to humanitarian and diplomatic efforts. Yet, the legitimacy of the war was hardly contested in any of the national prestige papers. These findings support the basic assumptions of the indexing thesis since the high degree of consent in the media system reflects the lack of substantial conflict in the German party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]