Uncensored journalism in censored times: Challenges of reporting on Azerbaijan

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110368
Author(s):  
Arzu Geybulla

Azerbaijan is an authoritarian regime, whose government maintains a tight grip over the media landscape. Independent and opposition media are regularly persecuted, with journalists and their family members intimidated by law enforcement agencies via arrests, beating, threats and other forms of persecution. Defamation is considered a criminal offence. This paper addresses the impact of this restrictive media environment on reporting about Azerbaijan. As scores of journalists have fled the country in search of safety, a community of exiled journalists has emerged and a number of news media websites operate in exile. Together they continue reporting on Azerbaijan with the help of a handful of journalists remaining on the ground. This paper explores how reporting on Azerbaijan continues despite a highly restricted media environment and what this means for other media systems facing authoritarian rule.

Author(s):  
BONTUR LUGARD Sunday

The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) is inarguably the most disrupting occurrence in human affairs since the World War II. This virus left governments, communities and systems with the legal, social and moral duties to protect from its impacts. However, some of the approaches adopted towards protecting the victims, potential victims, and the entire society, especially in Nigeria, caused more harm than the disease itself. This work reviews the impact of the curtailment measures adopted by governments in Nigeria and their adverse bearing on human rights, especially the right to life as a sacrosanct and universal right. It further examines how law enforcement agencies’ operations - within the confines of the institutional and international best practices - their non-adherence to the rules of engagement or principles of ethical operations have resulted in the violation of human rights, rather than protecting them. It also analyses the impact of the virus on the right to health and access to medical facilities in times of emergencies in Nigeria and concludes that both rights were either violated or not realized within the context of the ‘war’ against the COVID-19 pandemic. This work advocates for the continuous training on human rights responsibilities of law enforcement agents, a more rigorous recruitment process with a minimum qualification from school certificate to ordinary national diploma, the use of video camera in the course of operations, among others that would help safeguard the rights of citizens in times of emergencies like the COVID-19.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0255067
Author(s):  
Annamaria Ficara ◽  
Lucia Cavallaro ◽  
Francesco Curreri ◽  
Giacomo Fiumara ◽  
Pasquale De Meo ◽  
...  

Data collected in criminal investigations may suffer from issues like: (i) incompleteness, due to the covert nature of criminal organizations; (ii) incorrectness, caused by either unintentional data collection errors or intentional deception by criminals; (iii) inconsistency, when the same information is collected into law enforcement databases multiple times, or in different formats. In this paper we analyze nine real criminal networks of different nature (i.e., Mafia networks, criminal street gangs and terrorist organizations) in order to quantify the impact of incomplete data, and to determine which network type is most affected by it. The networks are firstly pruned using two specific methods: (i) random edge removal, simulating the scenario in which the Law Enforcement Agencies fail to intercept some calls, or to spot sporadic meetings among suspects; (ii) node removal, modeling the situation in which some suspects cannot be intercepted or investigated. Finally we compute spectral distances (i.e., Adjacency, Laplacian and normalized Laplacian Spectral Distances) and matrix distances (i.e., Root Euclidean Distance) between the complete and pruned networks, which we compare using statistical analysis. Our investigation identifies two main features: first, the overall understanding of the criminal networks remains high even with incomplete data on criminal interactions (i.e., when 10% of edges are removed); second, removing even a small fraction of suspects not investigated (i.e., 2% of nodes are removed) may lead to significant misinterpretation of the overall network.


2020 ◽  
pp. 258-264
Author(s):  
А. О. Полянський

The relevance of the article is that the effectiveness and efficiency of interaction between forensic agencies and law enforcement agencies depends on many factors, one of which is a properly "constructed" system of legal acts. At the same time, the special nature of the interaction of these entities, the attraction of its content to the administrative and legal sphere, as well as the specifics of forensic institutions and law enforcement agencies in general necessitates a detailed review of legal principles in this area and determining the place of administrative and legal regulation. The purpose of the article is to establish a system of legal bases for the interaction of forensic institutions with law enforcement agencies, as well as to determine the place of administrative and legal regulation among them. It is established that the legal basis of interaction of forensic institutions with law enforcement agencies is a system of regulations and their provisions governing the legal status of forensic institutions and law enforcement agencies, as well as the content and procedure of interaction of these entities. It is proved that administrative-legal regulation is a type of branch of the general-legal category of legal regulation, which occurs with the help of administrative law and determines the impact of law on public relations of a special nature arising from the activities of public administration. That is, we are talking about the relationship of power and management influence that prevails in the work of public authorities, local governments and so on. This is a purposeful, comprehensive, streamlining impact of law on public relations in the sphere of government, which occurs through the rules of administrative law, which are part of the system of legal principles outlined above. It is emphasized that the legal basis for the interaction of forensic institutions and law enforcement agencies have an administrative and legal basis, which is expressed in a large number of rules of administrative law, enshrined in regulations of various legal force. This situation is due to the fact that the norms of this branch of law determine: the administrative and legal status of forensic institutions and law enforcement agencies; functions, powers and tasks assigned to law enforcement agencies and forensic institutions; mechanisms of interaction of forensic institutions and law enforcement agencies in performing their functions defined by law; organizational and practical goals of this interaction; etc.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amahl Bishara

AbstractIn 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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Lawrence Siry

In recent years, the development of cloud storage and the ease of cross-border communication have rendered the area of evidence collection particularly difficult for law enforcement agencies (LEAs), courts and academics. Evidence related to a criminal act in one jurisdiction might be stored in a different jurisdiction. Often it is not even clear in which jurisdiction the relevant data are, and at times the data may be spread over multiple jurisdictions. The traditional rules related to cross-border evidence collection, the mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) regimes, have proved to be out-dated, cumbersome and inefficient, as they were suited for a time when the seeking of cross-border evidence was more infrequent. In order to tackle this problem, the United States has enacted the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, which gives extraterritorial e-evidence collection powers to US courts. Simultaneously, the European Union (EU) has proposed similar sweeping changes which would allow for LEAs in Member States to preserve and collect cloud-based evidence outside of the MLAT system. This article critically evaluates these developments from the perspective of the impact on the rights of EU citizens.


Author(s):  
Thomas Schillemans

Public agencies are the objects of a large share of the daily news and devote substantial resources to media management and monitoring. This paper analyses how public agencies have adapted their internal structures and processes in order to meet the demands from their media environment. To this end, an analytical framework for the analysis of organisational mediatisation – the adaptation of internal structures and processes to external media demands – is developed. This is the first framework available for empirical analyses of organisational mediatisation. Its use is then demonstrated in a comparative analysis of the mediatisation of public agencies in Australia and the Netherlands; countries with contrasting political and media systems. An explorative, multimethod study describes how Australian agencies go to greater lengths in accommodating their media environment – they fight the media beast – whereas Dutch agencies are more hesitant; they are fumbling with the beast.


Info ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seong Eun Cho ◽  
Dong-Hee Shin

Purpose – This study aims to examine the impact of news frames associated with traditional media and with Twitter discourse on social issues. Design/methodology/approach – Using semantic network analysis, it identifies the role of new alternative channels as well as discussing ways of understanding and consuming news content in the changing media environment. Additionally, it focuses on the dominant Twitter communicators who rank high in betweenness centrality. Findings – The results confirmed that traditional news media tend to superficially describe main events and media strikes without comment. They tended to consciously or unconsciously favor media corporations by engendering anxiety and conflict or by restraining reports on the rationales of the strike. Twitter discourse, on the contrary, positively represents the striker's arguments and frequently reveals support of the strike. Research limitations/implications – The data set of this study was specialized, not generalized. However, the findings extend literature relating to the role of journalism and alternative channel. For example, this study indicated that the change of media environment has reinforced partiality of news, including both traditional and alternative channels. Practical implications – The findings imply that the advent of new media does not purely represent a laymen's voice and rather tends to strengthen the partiality of media, including both traditional and new media, beyond selective exposure on content of the receiver. Originality/value – By clarifying the influence of alternative channels, this study suggests the counterpart of traditional journalism in the near future.


First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores the intersections between governance and media in western democracies, which have undergone profound recent changes. Many governmental powers have been shifted toward a host of network parties such as NGOs, state enterprises, international organizations, autonomous agencies, and local governments. Governments have developed complex networks for service delivery and they have a strategic interest in the news media as an arena where their interests can be served and threatened. How do the media relate to and report on complex systems of government? How do the various governance actors respond to the media and what are the effects on their policies? This book considers the impact of media-related factors on governance, policy, public accountability and the attribution of blame for failures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Philip Cass

Cass, P. (2015). How news media responded to India’s relationship with Britain. Pacific Journalism Review, 21(2): 205-207. Review of Communications, Media and the Imperial Experience, by Chandrika Kaul. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 278 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-57258-4Chandrika Kaul’s latest book begins and ends with what she regards as carefully stage-managed displays of British power designed to establish enduring images of imperial rule; in one, Indians and Britons bonded by their love of their King-Emperor and in the other, a noble, benevolent Britannia handing power to India as its civilising mission comes to a natural and peaceful end. Kaul, from St Andrews University in Scotland, has written or edited a number of books exploring imperial media systems and in this latest volume she explores how the media reacted to various stages in India’s relationship with Great Britain during the 20th century.


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