scholarly journals Media and compassion after digital war: Why digital media haven't transformed responses to human suffering in contemporary conflict

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (913) ◽  
pp. 117-143
Author(s):  
Andrew Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Compassion Fatigue ◽  
News Media ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Mass Action ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
New Era ◽  
Public Response ◽  
Digital Disruption ◽  
Instant Availability

AbstractThere is a persistent belief in the power of media images to transform the events they depict. Yet despite the instant availability of billions of images of human suffering and death in the continuous and connective digital glare of social media, the catastrophes of contemporary wars, such as in Syria and Yemen, unfold relentlessly. There are repeated expressions of surprise by some in the West when the dissemination of images of suffering and wars, particularly in mainstream news media, does not translate into a de-escalation of conflict.In this article I consider today's loosening of the often presumed relationship between media representation, knowledge and response under the conditions of “digital war”. This is the digital disruption of the relationship between warfare and society in which all sides participate in the uploading and sharing of information on, and images and videos of, conflict.Is it the case that the capacity of images of human injury and death to bring about change, and the expectation that they would stir practical intervention in wars, is and has been exaggerated? Even if we are moved or shocked upon being confronted by such images, does this translate into some form of action, individual or otherwise? In this article I contend that the saturation of information and images of human suffering and death in contemporary warfare has not ushered in a new era of “compassion fatigue”. Rather, algorithmically charged outrage is a proxy for effects. It is easy to misconstrue the velocity of linking and liking and sharing as some kind of mass action or mass movement.Humanitarian catastrophes slowly unfold in an age of continuous and connective digital glare, and yet they are unseen. If the imploded battlefield of digital war affording the most proximate and persistent view of human suffering and death in history cannot ultimately mobilize radically effective forms of public response, it is difficult to imagine what will.

scholarly journals Mobile bystanders and rubbernecks, disaster tourists, and helpers. Towards a theoretical framework for critically studying action possibilities at accident sites

2021 ◽  
pp. 205015792098482
Author(s):  
Linus Andersson ◽  
Ebba Sundin
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Mobile Media ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
Media Practices

This article addresses the phenomenon of mobile bystanders who use their smartphones to film or take photographs at accident scenes, instead of offering their help to people in need or to assist medical units. This phenomenon has been extensively discussed in Swedish news media in recent years since it has been described as a growing problem for first responders, such as paramedics, police, and firefighters. This article aims to identify theoretical perspectives that are relevant for analyzing mobile media practices and discuss the ethical implications of these perspectives. Our purpose is twofold: we want to develop a theoretical framework for critically approaching mobile media practices, and we want to contribute to discussions concerning well-being in a time marked by mediatization and digitalization. In this pursuit, we combine theory from social psychology about how people behave at traumatic scenes with discussions about witnessing in and through media, as developed in media and communication studies. Both perspectives offer various implications for normative inquiry, and in our discussion, we argue that mobile bystanders must be considered simultaneously as transgressors of social norms and as emphatic witnesses behaving in accordance with the digital media age. The article ends with a discussion regarding the implications for further research.

scholarly journals From audiences to data points: The role of media agencies in the platformization of the news media industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110298
Author(s):  
Ida Willig
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Marketing Budgets

Media agencies have become one of the key actors in the contemporary media industry: by channelling marketing budgets to some media and some platforms and not to others, media agencies play an important role in creating the digital media infrastructure and laying the tracks of the public sphere. Yet we know very little about these commercial middlemen between advertisers and audiences, what they do, and how we should understand their role in the digital media ecology. This article discusses the role of media agencies in relation to platformization with a focus on the news media sector. Based on interviews, publicly available material and trade journals, the article depicts an industry deeply engaged in digitizing, tracking and commodifying media audiences, while at the same time aware of ethical challenges of the digital media infrastructure. This leads to a call for more political attention and critical research on the democratic implications of the new value chains between platforms, advertisers, audiences, media agencies and news media as well as the many tech companies providing derived digital services and products.

Data-Driven Information Consumption

2019 ◽  
pp. 424-437
Author(s):  
Joseph McKendrick
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Business Model ◽  
News Media ◽  
Publishing Industry ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
News Content ◽  
Content Development ◽  
Media Organizations ◽  
Different Sources

Things are changing dramatically within the publishing industry. However, news media itself isn't on the wane, as many pundits are stating. In this chapter, the author explores how the business model for media organizations is shifting away from print, and away from the “gateway” approach to journalism and content development, in which a few select articles are presented to audience by editors, writers and reporters. In its place, the new digital media model is creating a plethora of content from many different sources, oftentimes first-hand accounts, original sources, or commentary. In the process, rather than resulting in a dearth of news content, audiences have access to an often dizzying, overwhelming and potentially contradictory content. This is creating potentially new roles for news and publishing organizations, serving as sources of validation and aggregation of content. At the same time, the rise of digital media is providing consumers a far wider range of choices pushing media organizations to provide content more tailored to their audiences.

Digitalisation of the Global FinTech Industry

2020 ◽  
pp. 431-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Waleed Butt ◽  
Usman Javed Butt
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Banking Industry ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Value Proposition ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Digital Disruption ◽  
Financial Technology

The digitalisation of global financial technology and marketing is central for the success of many banking organisations across the globe. Digital disruption is a change that occurs when new emerging digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition of existing goods and services for low end demanding customers or for new market customers. Digital banking or online or virtual banking is leading to the digitization of all the traditional banking activities, products, process, or services. It is needless to state that mere adaptation of digital media to comply with trends does not guarantee success. The digital trends in the banking industry has seen banks focusing on digitalization core processes, increasing awareness, financial inclusions, and undertaking sustainable practices. FinTech (i.e., financial technology) is competing with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services and reaching the unbanked segment of society, particularly in developing countries. There is a strong need to understand drivers and trends in the FinTech industry.

scholarly journals More than a trivial pursuit: Public order policing narratives and the ‘social media test’

2020 ◽  
pp. 174165902091863
Author(s):  
Justin R Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Excessive Force ◽  
The Social ◽  
Police Accountability ◽  
Trivial Pursuit ◽  
Media Narratives ◽  
Depth Interviews

Social media has transformed public discourse on policing and the contest of control over the police image. This article draws on original, empirical research to conceptualise the phenomenon of the ‘social media test’ – the evolution of social media into a legitimate measure of police performance. Through in-depth interviews with police and non-police respondents the article maps the genealogy of, and provides perspective on, one of the first viral cases of bystander video of police excessive force in Australia filmed and uploaded to YouTube. The study shows the video’s impact on hegemonic mainstream and police news media narratives, processes of criminalisation and police accountability and the merit of narrative criminology in unpacking these phenomena. Police alluding to the ‘social media test’ in in-depth interviews shows that digital media in general and social media in particular can no longer be dismissed as peripheral or subsidiary to public discourse on policing in a digital society.

Transnational News Flows

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daya Kishan Thussu
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Online News ◽  
Global Market ◽  
The West ◽  
News Agencies ◽  
American Media ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Undersea Cables

The international flow of news has traditionally been dominated by that from North to South, with the West being at the core. Within the West itself, news flow is dominated by Anglo-American media, a situation which has its roots in the way that journalism developed historically. The historical context of global news begins with the introduction of the telegraph and undersea cables in the nineteenth century, which created a global market for news. Major players emerged—including news agencies—and shaped the transnational news flows. What emerges is that, in all ages, key innovations in transnational news flows have been closely linked to commerce, geopolitics, and war, from the telegraph to online news outlets. The increasing availability and use of news media, from major non-Western countries, are now affecting transnational news flows. Global journalism has been transformed in the digital age by internet-based communication and the rise of digital media opportunities—allowing for multi-directional news flows for growing global news audiences.

Post-Truth and Critical Communication Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayson Harsin
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
False News

While the periodizing concept “post-truth” (PT) initially appeared in the United States as a key word of popular politics in the form “post-truth politics” or “post-truth society,” it quickly appeared in many languages. It is now the object of increasing scholarly attention and public debate. Its popular and academic treatments sometimes differ in respect to its meaning, but most associate it with communication forms such as fake or false news, rumors, hoaxes, and political lying. They also identify causes such as polarization and unethical politicians or unregulated social media; shoddy journalism; or simply the inevitable chaos ushered in by digital media technologies. PT is sometimes posited as a social and political condition whereby citizens or audiences and politicians no longer respect truth (e.g., climate science deniers or “birthers”) but simply accept as true what they believe or feel. However, more rigorously, PT is actually a breakdown of social trust, which encompasses what was formerly the major institutional truth-teller or publicist—the news media. What is accepted as popular truth is really a weak form of knowledge, opinion based on trust in those who supposedly know. Critical communication approaches locate its historical legacy in the earliest forms of political persuasion and questions of ethics and epistemology, such as those raised by Plato in the Gorgias. While there are timeless similarities, PT is a 21st-century phenomenon. It is not “after” truth but after a historical period where interlocking elite institutions were discoverers, producers, and gatekeepers of truth, accepted by social trust (the church, science, governments, the school, etc.). Critical scholars have identified a more complex historical set of factors, to which popular proposed solutions have been mostly blind. Modern origins of PT lie in the anxious elite negotiation of mass representative liberal democracy with proposals for organizing and deploying mass communication technologies. These elites consisted of pioneers in the influence or persuasion industries, closely associated with government and political practice and funding, and university research. These influence industries were increasingly accepted not just by business but also by (resource-rich) professional political actors. Their object was not policy education and argument to constituents but, increasingly strategically, emotion and attention management. PT can usefully be understood in the context of its historical emergence, through its popular forms and responses, such as rumors, conspiracies, hoaxes, fake news, fact-checking, and filter bubbles, as well as through its multiple effects—not the least of which the discourse of panic about it.

3. The first casualty: journalists at war

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hargreaves
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Al Jazeera ◽  
Television Channel ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
War Reporting

It was in the ‘Balkan wars’ of the 1990s that the news media and the military started to understand the extent to which digital media were reshaping the craft of war reporting. Journalists were now able to report from behind enemy lines. War has always delivered the most severe test to journalistic independence. What are the challenges to journalists reporting news in a war situation? How objective can they be? ‘The first casualty: journalists at war’ charts the impact of the digital era on war reporting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rise of the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera.

scholarly journals Digital Media and the Entrenchment of Right-Wing Populist Agendas

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Manipulation ◽  
Political Divide

Since Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump, news media around the world have given extensive coverage to the issue of disinformation and polarization. This article argues that while the negative effects of social media have dominated the discussion, these effects do not address how right-wing populists have been able to successfully and legitimately use digital media to circumvent traditional media. The article uses the United States and Sweden as case studies about how digital media have helped to achieve electoral success and shift the political direction in both countries—though in quite different ways. It also argues that the sources of right-wing populism go beyond the hitherto dominant left–right political divide, capturing anti-elite sentiment, and promoting exclusionary nationalism. The dominance of the issue of media manipulation has obscured the shift whereby the relation between the media and politics has become more fluid and antagonistic, which fits the populist agenda. This shift requires a rethinking of political communication that includes both the social forces that give rise to populism and the alternative digital channels that entrench them, with implications for the prospects of the role of media in politics in the two countries and beyond.

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