scholarly journals ‘Journalism of hope’ realities in post-election Fiji

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Ricardo Morris

Commentary: In the lead up to Fiji General Election in September 2014, there was an air of positivity among media workers that despite the difficulties since the military takeover in December 2006—including the imposition of the Media Industry Development Decree in 2010—their operating environment would possibly be easing. The Fiji Sun, which had chosen in 2009 after the abolition of the 1997 Constitution to change its stance, adopting an editorial policy unabashedly partisan towards the Voreqe Bainimarama-led government, opened up its pages to all political parties and candidates giving them relatively free rein to comment on the political landscape as they saw it. Media organisations ran reports that criticised the military-led regime’s performance as campaigning began to pick up. However, not long after the much-hailed return-to-democracy election it became clear that the reappearance of media vibrancy and plurality would not happen overnight. The author critically examines the post-election climate and draws on his personal experience as a Fiji news media editor.

Author(s):  
Timothy Wilson ◽  
Mara Favoretto

In the 20th century Argentina experienced a series of dictatorial regimes of varying intensity, but the last dictatorship stands apart. The Process of National Reorganization or Proceso (1976–1983) was not only the most brutally repressive, “disappearing” 30,000 of its own citizens into concentration camps, but also the most ambitious in terms of ideological mission. Its campaign, officially called “the war against subversion,” was committed to the total eradication of leftist ideas from the political landscape of the country by any means necessary. This radical transformation was to be brought about not only in the torture chamber, but in the media as well. The regime planned an Orwellian redefinition of words: the systematic creation of a national vocabulary that would exclude certain ideas and parties. In order to achieve its overt project of the appropriation of language, the junta maintained obsessive control over the media, instituted strict censorship reinforced by terror, and bombarded the airwaves and newspapers with official communiqués. In the face of this repression, most journalists and writers and many artists could not express dissent of any kind. Yet singers of a new Argentine music genre that came to be known as rock nacional developed codified and oblique metaphorical expression in their lyrics that allowed them to evade censorship and to continue to criticize the military regime with relative impunity. Moreover, many Argentine youths found solace in the music and used it to create communities in which they could meet and express themselves. The regime had sought to deny young Argentines a forum for public speech; however, together artists and listeners created a rock nacional culture that provided community for the isolated and lent a voice to the silenced.


Author(s):  
Julia Partheymüller

It is widely believed that the news media have a strong influence on defining what are the most important problems facing the country during election campaigns. Yet, recent research has pointed to several factors that may limit the mass media’s agenda-setting power. Linking news media content to rolling cross-section survey data, the chapter examines the role of three such limiting factors in the context of the 2009 and the 2013 German federal elections: (1) rapid memory decay on the part of voters, (2) advertising by the political parties, and (3) the fragmentation of the media landscape. The results show that the mass media may serve as a powerful agenda setter, but also demonstrate that the media’s influence is strictly limited by voters’ cognitive capacities and the structure of the campaign information environment.


Author(s):  
Kevin Munger ◽  
Patrick J. Egan ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Jonathan Ronen ◽  
Joshua Tucker

Abstract Does social media educate voters, or mislead them? This study measures changes in political knowledge among a panel of voters surveyed during the 2015 UK general election campaign while monitoring the political information to which they were exposed on the Twitter social media platform. The study's panel design permits identification of the effect of information exposure on changes in political knowledge. Twitter use led to higher levels of knowledge about politics and public affairs, as information from news media improved knowledge of politically relevant facts, and messages sent by political parties increased knowledge of party platforms. But in a troubling demonstration of campaigns' ability to manipulate knowledge, messages from the parties also shifted voters' assessments of the economy and immigration in directions favorable to the parties' platforms, leaving some voters with beliefs further from the truth at the end of the campaign than they were at its beginning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188
Author(s):  
Godfrey Maringira

This article argues that, through the coup, the military has become more visible in national politics in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. The current situation under President Mnangagwa marks a qualitative difference with the military under Mugabe’s rule. Currently, in now being more prominent, the military is politics and is the determinant of any political transition that may be forthcoming in Zimbabwe. However, if it deems it necessary, the military accommodates civilian politicians into politics in order to ‘sanitize’ the political landscape in its own interests. Simultaneously, despite their involvement in the coup, ordinary soldiers feel increasingly marginalized under Mnangagwa’s government.


Author(s):  
I. Semenenko ◽  
G. Irishin

The economic crisis of 2008–2009 highlighted new problems in the development of the German social market economy model and brought to the forefront the factors of its resilience that have ensured Germany’s leadership positions in the EU. Changes in economic policy have affected in the first place the energy and the financial sectors. Shifts in the political landscape have led to the appearance of new political parties. These changes have affected the results of the 2013 elections, the liberal democrats failure to enter the Bundestag has made the winner – CDU – seek new coalition partners.


Author(s):  
A. Dzhumadullaeva ◽  
◽  
E. Zulpykharova ◽  

The article considers the fact that the Seljuk state was founded by the Oghuz Seljuks, as well as the internal social policy of the Seljuk empire as a prerequisite for a crisis in the country (late XI and early XII centuries). The Seljuks combined the fragmented political landscape of the eastern Islamic world and played a key role in first and second crusades. Strongly Persianized in culture and language, the Seljuks also played an important role in the development of the Turkic-Persian tradition, even exporting Persian culture to Anatolia. The resettlement of Turkic tribes in the northwestern peripheral parts of the empire with the military strategic goal of repelling the invasions of neighboring states led to the gradual Turkization of these territories. Sultans handed out nobles and ordinary warriors to the nobility - ikta, which made it possible for the sultan to maintain power. At the end of the XI century, large conquests ended, bringing the nobility new lands and military booty, which led to a change in the political situation in the country. Know began to strive to turn their possessions into legally hereditary, and their power over the Rayyats - into unlimited; the owners of large Lenas raised rebellions, seeking independence (Khorezm in the 1st half of the XII century). To provide the army with land (ICT), wages, gifts, food, weapons, uniforms, medicines, the Sultan's government went to any expense. The widespread use of ICT in the army has allowed the creation of a stable mercenary army, specializing in the change of people's squads


Author(s):  
Luís Guilherme Nascimento de Araujo ◽  
Claudio Everaldo Dos Santos ◽  
Elizabeth Fontoura Dorneles ◽  
Ionathan Junges ◽  
Nariel Diotto ◽  
...  

The political and economic crises faced today, evidenced by the manifestos of political parties and the texts published in social networks and in the press, point to Brazilian society the possibility of different directions, including that of an autocratic regime, with the return of the military to the public sphere. This article discusses the movements of acceptance and resistance to the military regime that was implemented in Brazil with the coup of 1964. It is observed that the military uprising received at that time the support of a large part of the Brazilian population, which sought ways to maintain its socioeconomic status to the detriment of a majority that perceived itself vulnerable in view of the forms of maintenance and expansion of power used by the regime. In this context, Tropicalism emerges as an example of a contesting movement. This text approaches the song "Culture and civilization" by Gilberto Gil, performed by Gal Costa, relating the ideas present in this composition with the understandings of politics and culture, in a multidisciplinary proposal, seeking to understand the resistance and counter-resistance movements that emerged in Brazil at the time.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir ◽  
Þorgerður Einarsdóttir

The news media are the most influential sources of information, ideas and opinion for most people around the world. Who appears in the news and who is left out, what is covered and what is not and how people and events are portrayed matter. Research has consistently shown that women are underrepresented in the news and that gender stereotypes are reinforced in and through the media. The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action recognised the relationship between women and media as a major area of concern in achieving gender equality in contemporary societies. This article presents Nordic findings from the 2015 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), which is the largest and longest-running study on gender in the world’s media. The findings show that women account for only 1 in 5 of the people interviewed or reported on by Icelandic news media and that women’s overall presence in the news has declined compared to the last GMMP study in 2010. The proportion of women as news subjects is also considerably lower than in other Nordic countries. We argue that the number of women who are journalists, managers in the media industry and decision makers in society has increased, but this shift has not automatically changed the representation of women in the news, either in numbers or in their portrayal. This discrepancy indicates that the relationship between gender and the news media is complicated and needs to be approached from different perspectives.


2018 ◽  
Vol 164 (5) ◽  
pp. 358-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ojas Pujji ◽  
S L A Jeffery

Burn excision is the gold standard treatment for full thickness and some deep partial thickness burns. Early burn excision (24–96 hours) has been shown to improve patient outcomes. However, in the military setting, transporting the patient to a centre which can provide this procedure can be delayed. Especially as control of airspace in the future may be hampered due to the political landscape. For this reason, focus on how to achieve safer burn excision prior to repatriation should be addressed. This paper considers the barriers to early burn excision in the military setting and offers potential solutions for the future.


Author(s):  
Yangkun Huang ◽  
Xiaoping Xu ◽  
Sini Su

Over the past decade, China has witnessed fast-paced technological advancements in the media industry, as well as major shifts in the health agenda portrayed in the media. Therefore, a key starting point when discussing health communication lies in whether media attention and public attention towards health issues are structurally aligned, and to what extent the news media guide public attention. Based on data mined from 73,060 sets of the Baidu Search Index and Media Index on 20 terms covering different types of cancer from 2011 to 2020, the Granger test demonstrates that, in the last decade, public attention and media attention towards cancer in China has gone through two distinct phases. During the first phase, 2011-2015, Chinese news media still held the key in transferring the salience of issues on most cancer types to the public. In the second phase, from 2016-2020, public attention towards cancer has gradually diverged from media coverage, mirroring the imbalance and mismatch between the demand of active public and the supply of cancer information from news media. This study provides an overview of the dynamic transition on cancer issues in China over a ten-year span, along with descriptive results on public and media attention towards specific cancer types.


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