This thematic issue of Media and Communication features articles that address the workings of democracy as understood through the lens of media history. The intersection of democracy and media history brings together two impossibly expansive terms, so expansive that the articles herein cannot provide any meaningful closure to the questions that even a cursory consideration of media history and democracy would provoke. Instead of closure, what these authors develop is a demonstration of the value of media history to our understandings of democracy. Historical methods of inquiry are necessary components for any meaningful understanding of media or democracy, and the authors gathered here work from a multi-hued palette of historiographical approaches. One finds in this issue a careful attention to how issues related to media history and democracy can be investigated through consideration of intellectual history, the history of political debates, journalism history, and the history of media organizations and institutions. These articles make a strong case for the continued relevance of media history to understanding the democracy and the media.
Digital humanities is an important challenge for more traditional humanities disciplines to take on, but advanced digital methods for analysis are not often used to answer concrete research questions in these disciplines. This article makes use of extensive digital collections of historical newspapers to discuss the promising, yet challenging relationship between digital humanities and historical research. The search for long-term patterns in digital historical research appropriately positions itself within previous approaches to historical research, but the digitization of sources presents many practical and theoretical questions and obstacles. For this reason, any digital source used in historical research should be critically reviewed beforehand. Digital newspaper research raises new issues and presents new possibilities to better answer traditional questions.
Trolls for Trump', virtual rape, fake news - social media discourse, including forms of virtual and real violence, has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. What characterizes online vitriol? How do we understand the narratives generated, and also address their real-world - even life-and-death - impact? How can hatred, bullying, and dehumanization on social media platforms be addressed and countered in a post-truth world? This book unpicks discourses, metaphors, media dynamics, and framing on social media, to begin to answer these questions. Written for and by cultural and media studies scholars, journalists, political philosophers, digital communication professionals, activists and advocates, this book makes the connections between theoretical approaches from cultural and media studies and practical challenges and experiences 'from the field', providing insight into a rough media landscape.
Western governments, international development agencies, foundations, and donor organizations regard "democratic journalism" as a tool to liberalize authoritarian regimes and contain religious fundamentalism and anti-Western sentiments abroad. It has become synonymous with Western-style journalism and is regarded as dedicated to extending democracy and free market economics. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, democratic journalism has been exported to its former republics through seminars and workshops that generally emphasize traditional U.S. news values such as impact, conflict, novelty, prominence, proximity, and timeliness. As journalism educators and trainers, we have participated in this process. These values are often touted as alternatives to values connected to Soviet-era news conventions, policies, and underlying ideology. There is no generally accepted definition of "democratic journalism," but commonly accepted elements are drawn from the libertarian press model of Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm. Although the relevance of their Cold War-era categorization may be outdated, as critics argue, their model includes identifiable attributes of "democratic journalism:" "The press is conceived of as a partner in the search for truth. The press is not an instrument of government, but rather a device for presenting evidence and arguments on the basis of which the people can check on government and make up their minds as to policy. Therefore, it is imperative that the press be free from government control and influence. There must be a 'free market place' of ideas and information." "Western-style journalism has been acclaimed a model for global journalism, but for the most part by Western-style journalists and scholars," Brislin wrote. He warned of the "futility of attempting to fit indigenous values into a procrustean bed of Western economic or political design. Multiple models of citizen-press-government relations grow legitimately out of indigenous value systems and are endurable within the forces of globalization." Yet Western trainers too rarely consider the relevance of pre-existing, Soviet-shaped news values and conventions. The Soviets regarded the press as a propaganda-"education"-weapon for the communist party. Schlesinger observed that Marxist governments "treat the news of the day as the basis on which to propagate the ideas they stand for; informing their readers about current events is treated as part of an educational activity." Simultaneously, trainers push for uncritical adoption of Western conventions, such as those inherent in the "inverted pyramid" reporting and writing style that remains dominant in American journalism, although Western publications now supplement that traditional structure with alternatives.
The paper discusses some concepts, trends, and deficits in recent media history, and it makes a plea for a history of communication to implement media into a broader conception of social history. Therefore, we employ a wider notion of mediatization which is used in media and communication studies, and re-formulate it for historical research. On the basis of that notion, we introduce the theoretical concept of 'communicative figurations' which an interdisciplinary research group in Bremen and Hamburg developed to ask how changing media environments and ensembles interrelate with societal and political transformations. In transferring it in research on imagined communities in times of analogue media, the paper presents some early insights into an on-going project and pursues questions about the communicative construction of collectivities.
This case study examines the coverage of a historic crime story by two local newspapers and a local television station and documents similarities and differences among the media coverage. Lipschultz and Hilt indicate that although not the most common, crime is the most covered type of story. Media history scholars need to highlight instances in which local TV stations and newspapers do an especially good job of covering certain kinds of stories which interest and have an impact on the public, in this case a high-profile crime story. Previous research indicates that people rely on local television and news to fully understand a story and to know about local crime, government, school issues, and politics.
In Media, Technology, and Society , some of the most prominent figures in media studies explore the issue of media evolution. Focusing on a variety of compelling examples in media history, ranging from the telephone to the television, the radio to the Internet, these essays collectively address a series of notoriously vexing questions about the nature of technological change. Is it possible to make general claims about the conditions that enable or inhibit innovation? Does government regulation tend to protect or thwart incumbent interests? What kinds of concepts are needed to address the relationship between technology and society in a nonreductive and nondeterministic manner? To what extent can media history help us to understand and to influence the future of media in constructive ways? The contributors' historically grounded responses to these questions will be relevant to numerous fields, including history, media and communication studies, management, sociology, and information studies.
For decades, the media has been a powerful agency in presenting Kashmir and shaping views in the national and the international imaginations. Recognising the complex multiplexity of the influences on the media that report on Kashmir, this work is an endeavour to examine the history of the media's relationship with the state through Archival Research. Documents accessed from Srinagar's Civil Secretariat's media section of the archives unravel the state's attempts to establish a relationship with the media in the militarised region since the early 1950s. This research sheds light on the nature of the association between the media and the state, as this understanding is crucial in understanding any conflict region. Hence, it becomes necessary to uncover the trajectory of power, as well as the nuances of histo-political nature of the liaison between the two entities that have contoured the narrative on this region of conflict.
Icebergs, at present, are living a second life on screens. While they are one of the natural world's most photogenic objects, icebergs are also subject to modes of representation through parametric modeling applications. The purpose of this digital life on screens is largely confined to determining how, and under what conditions, icebergs can be made a source of potable water for the planet. Yet icebergs have a story to tell about the epistemological and economic production of northern natural resources. Distinct institutional actors, from oceanographers and military engineers to Saudi royalty and software design companies, have sought to control and come to know icebergs through specific practices of modeling. I argue that the representation of icebergs is a contingent practice that has often been bound up with processes of commodification. To come to know icebergs we have to come to know how these quintessentially polar phenomena have been represented and commodified, across the twentieth century and at a significant remove from the highest latitudes of the planet. The increasing pace of northern development, with natural resources at the vanguard of corporate and governmental incursions, signals the emergence of "media environments" that are extending the representation of (and control over) natural phenomena through a series of media technologies, from 3D modeling applications and collections of satellite data to virtual reality environments and predictive algorithms.
On July 10, 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump tweeted, "The media is so dishonest. If I make a statement, they twist it and turn it to make it sound bad or foolish. They think the public is stupid!"[1] On August 10, 2016 Trump's campaign released a statement titled, "Trump Campaign Statement on Dishonest Media."[2] The statement itself had nothing to do with media dishonesty, but rather the statement clarified some remarks the candidate made during a speech about gun control. Both of these statements were made due to Trump's feeling that his words had been twisted and misrepresented by a so called liberal media machine, run by Hillary Clinton. Throughout his campaign Trump has repeatedly stated that the media is out to get him and reports in favor of his opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump's dissent with the media does is by no means an outlier. Most Americans, Republican and Democrat, would agree with Trump's statement, that the media is, in fact, biased. A recent Gallup poll taken in 2014 found that 40% of Americans were not confident in the media's ability to fully, accurately or fairly report news. This distrust is not a recent phenomenon either, since the late 90s a pattern of lowered trust in media has emerged.[3] But is this really the truth? Are media outlets inherently biased towards one group or another and is there substantial proof to back this claim? After all, most people would agree that Donald Trump's statements are not usually entirely accurate and his tendency to overlook details is well known. In addition, national polls tend to lose some merit when sample size, demographics and other factors come into play. This paper seeks to answer the question of media bias through the analysis of quantitative data from a variety of academic studies dedicated to this question. I hope to add to the growing conversation concerning bias in the media's reporting for foreign events. This paper will seek to prove that bias is harder to detect in international reporting rather than domestic events due to lack of firsthand information. Using two major news outlets, CNN and FOX television news as sources I will examine this potential for bias through the sponsorships of CNN and FOX, their use of particular source materials and the psychological methods such as framing each employs.
The ways people have publicly discussed and written about media literacy in the past have great bearing on how citizens, educators and learners are able to think about and practice their own media literacy. Our concepts of media literacy have evolved over time in response to changing contexts of media studies and educational discourses as well as changes in communication technologies, media industries, politics, and popular culture. My research on the history of Media&Values magazine 1977-1993, made possible by the Elizabeth Thoman Media Literacy Archive, illustrates how tracing developments of media literacy concepts over time can give us much needed perspective on the discursive contexts that constitute our field of media literacy practices today. In Media&Values, media literacy emerges from its historical contexts as a means for reform, a practice of understanding representation/reality, and a pedagogy of social analysis and inquiry. Each of these themes constructs media literacy as an intervention in power, but at different conceptual levels—addressing institutions; demystifying ideology; and negotiating identities. These historical constructions lend perspective for understanding our diverse approaches to media literacy education today in terms of how we constitute power relations among learners, educators, media makers and users, and media texts, technology and industry.
New Zealand has not always been the robust little democracy with the freedom of speech enjoyed today. The election of the first Labour government, the 1951 Waterfront Lockout emergency regulations and the Muldoon era were all testing times for the news media. In the first of the three commentaries, Prime Minister Helen Clark examines a politician's view of media rights, responsibilities and ethics.
The aim of the article is to examine and analyze the specific Georgian peculiarities of the Glasnost policy in 1989-90, based on the relational content analysis of 158 media stories from four Georgian newspapers with different editorial policies. The term Georgian peculiarities refer to (1) media system specifics and (2) characteristic features of re-evaluation of Soviet History as a crucial part of Glasnost narrative. Studying the specific characteristics of Georgia's mainstream media at that time is interesting in that it allows for (1) critical analysis of Hallin and Mancini's theoretical approach and ways to enrich it through the study of media transformation from still authoritarian in form but, in essence, under a mixed type of political system (this process may be referred to as political uncertainty), and (2) accentuation of the media's active role in shaping political and cultural memory. As for history's reevaluation in Glasnost's content, it still remains the main, dominant issue ultimately unrivaled (in terms of time and intensity) by any other issue proclaimed by Glasnost—be it food shortage exposed by the media or criticism of one-party rule. The issue of history's reevaluation in the Soviet republics, in the so-called national periphery, acquired an even more critical meaning because the change brought about Perestroika there, along with the new political and social elites, placed history as the cornerstone of a future independent state, or metaphorically speaking, turned yesterday into today and further into tomorrow. This process proved to be so far-reaching that so-called inert Glasnost maintained its position even in the post-Soviet media for some time and with certain intensity. The main findings of the article are: 1) Identifying the unified and segmented paradigms of Glasnost in Georgia's politics and media; 2) Defining the political attitudes of the Georgian political elites toward Glasnost, and 3) Distinguishing the concept of reinterpretation of history (in the Center, Moscow) from the ...
What are the premises of the major questions in media theory? Arguing for better questions this contribution notes the persistence of eurocentricism, mediacentricism and technological determinism and the dominance of the experience of what Jared Diamond calls the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies) nations in framing the terms of debate and study.Anthropology in works such as Larkin (2008) may help defamiliarise the presumptions of western media theory and more clearly address the question of 'Where is the global "Greenwich Mean Time" of Media Theory?' Arguing for the need to place the technological present in historical perspective (cf Edgerton, 2008) this contribution makes the case for the primacy of historical and spatial contexts over the immediate moment of technological invention – on which so much attention is customarily focussed. To focus on media technologies and 'inventions' without considerations of their context runs the risks of embracing such dangerous simplifications as the idea that their socio-cultural effects can be deduced from their presumed technological 'essences' – whereas any given technology may very well come to have quite different significance in varying cultural contexts.
In times of war and peace alike, the government uses the media to inform the population with more or less objective news or propaganda. In his article, William Uricchio considers media technology as a weapon in the government's hands. How can the media almost literally be used as a weapons system? --- In tijden van oorlog — en ook daarbuiten — gebruiken overheden de media om de bevolking te informeren. Met meer of minder objectief nieuws of met propaganda. William Uricchio beschouwt in onderstaand artikel de mediatechnologie als een wapen in handen van de overheid. Hoe kunnen media bijna letterlijk fungeren als een wapensysteem?