The Building Public Trust Against to Law Enforcers in the Covid 19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the credibility of the performance of law enforcement. National survey data and reports from various national media found a decline in public trust in law enforcement. With a normative juridical approach and using secondary data, this paper discusses what factors can restore public trust in law enforcement. First, the independence of law enforcement officers to improve the mentality of law enforcement in acting, secondly, it is necessary to develop a transformational bureaucratic leadership model to make changes in the field of services law enforcement in order to increase public trust.

Polarization and Platformization of News in Italian Journalism

Integration between digital platforms and news organizations has produced a substantial platformization of news. This phenomenon has been accompanied by a growing political polarization of journalistic content, exacerbated in Italy by the high level of partisanship that traditionally characterizes the national media. This chapter outlines one part of a wider study on the debate about the regularization of migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, based on mixed methods and a two-level analytical approach, considers articles and posts published on Facebook by 12 different news providers (top-down) along with users' comments on this content (bottom-up). The authors here present the investigation into the coverage of migrant worker regularization by discussing the findings of the evaluative assertion and news frame analyses carried out on the selected articles and posts. Using this multidimensional approach, the study highlights the persistent nature of polarization within a highly fragmented public sphere.

Surviving Through Tactics: The Everyday Life of Syrian Refugees in Turkey

The Syrian civil war and related migration affected Turkish border cities such as Antakya, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, Gaziantep, and Kilis. In this study, we explore the tactics and strategies developed by Syrian asylum seekers in order to cope with the prejudices and negative perceptions about Syrians commonly shared by locals. The findings of our research are drawn from the in-depth interviews we conducted with more than one hundred refugees, locals, and staff members of different NGOs. Our arguments and conclusions in this article are also the result of observations made during several research trips and a thorough examination of news about refugees in local and national media. Our field research lasted from August 2014 to February 2015, but the substantial part of this study was conducted between January and February 2015.

Politics and Media Hegemony Policy in Indonesia

This research aims to help those trying to master the media and political power in Indonesia and use the media as a tool to build community system from the Dutch colonial rule to the independence era, particularly from 1999 to 2019. This study is about how the system formed the media under the political policy until it developed into a base media in Indonesia between the era of the Dutch conquest and the year 2019. To achieve the objective of the study, investigation has been made upon media as a factor that affects the formation of the base to control the freedom of the media by using the investigation approach on history through document analysis and deep interview. The finding shows that forming a base that controls the freedom of the media is based on a proses which is designed soberly to fit with the philosophy and the value which is practiced by the ruling leader, and became the base of the national media activist in Indonesia.

The Subtle Dynamics of Power Struggles in Tunisia: Local media since the Arab Uprisings

This article contributes to the analysis of local media and democratic transformation in Tunisia since the Arab Uprisings. It aims to assess the extent to which pluralism, freedom of expression, and participation—central tenets of democratisation—are evident at the local level. Tunisian local media, unlike the national media, is relatively free of governmental control. Local media is also decentralised. It is this autonomy from the government which makes the analysis of local media fundamentally important for understanding politics in Tunisia. While national media is linked to the most powerful elements in the country, the diversity of voices within the media at the local level provides an opportunity to grasp the grievances, struggles, and agency of people in Tunisia, especially the most marginalised communities. This article will detail the changes in the media landscape, especially for local media, in Tunisia and connect our analysis of local media to better understand the Tunisia that has developed between dictatorship and democracy and the extent that the fledgling Tunisian democracy can withstand its most recent test.

Intolerance in the Media and Representations of the Catholic Church

Intolerance toward Christians in Europe including Slovenia is increasing and experts are not dealing with it sufficiently. The media plays a key role in disseminating information and shaping social representations. The fact that the media, due to the nature of their action, will always be in conflict with the Church, must not be a reason for intolerance. In Slovenia, the media are the central creators of negative opinions about the Church. They are very sophisticated in spreading Christianophobia. The journalists with the most published articles with negative connotations regarding the Church create negative social representations. Negative topics that are most often associated with the Church in the media are sexual abuse, money and politics. An analysis of the connotation and topic of the articles shows that the serious socio-political themes of the Church are neglected in the media. The local media mostly write positively about the Church, as they are aware of specific events, while the national media write about it negatively since they are often distant from specific events and usually evaluate them according to editorial policy criteria, and not according to professional arguments and varied opinions. The location of events covered negatively in articles happen both within and outside Slovenia. Most negative articles do not include photos; however, tabloids usually include them. By reducing the dissemination of negative and discriminatory messages about the Church and raising the ethics of reporting, intolerance towards Christians and other minorities will decrease.

Dietas confinadas: análisis del discurso de la prensa sobre la nutrición en tiempos de Covid-19

The essential elements of the Spanish press’s discourse on nutrition guidelines during the Covid-19 health crisis are identified. To do this, the evolution of media representation is examined, with a semantic analysis of the news appearing in the national media in Spanish regarding nutrition and Covid-19. The analyzed period is from 31 January 2020 to 31 January 2021. The content search carried out using the Factiva database identified 117 records, which were analysed using T-LAB software. The results reveal that the press warned of hoaxes regarding nutrition during the study period. Four semantic groups are identified, informing about the most appropriate eating patterns according to the different circumstances during the pandemic. The results show that the press plays a role as an educator of Spanish society on nutrition-related topics. Resumen Se identifican los elementos esenciales sobre el discurso que la prensa española llevó a cabo sobre las pautas de nutrición durante la crisis sanitaria de la Covid-19. Se examina la evolución de la representación mediática y se efectúa un análisis semántico de las noticias aparecidas en los medios nacionales y en lengua española referidas a la nutrición y la Covid-19. El período analizado se inició el 31 de enero de 2020 y finalizó el 31 de enero de 2021. La búsqueda de contenidos se realizó mediante la base de datos Factiva. Se obtuvieron 117 registros que se analizaron mediante el software T-LAB. Los resultados revelan que la prensa alerta de los bulos sobre nutrición que se han producido durante el período analizado. Se identifican cuatro grupos semánticos orientados a informar sobre las pautas de alimentación más adecuadas según las diferentes circunstancias en la pandemia. Se constata que la prensa desempeña su papel como agente educador en la sociedad en materia de nutrición.

INTEGRATION CHALLENGES OF MEDIA POLICY IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

In the process of political transition of the Western Balkan countries, the non-EU countries in particular, the reform of communication systems occupies one of the primary places within the implementation of economic, cultural, political and integration processes of each country. Communication research that seeks to define the dilemmas of the current communication situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a determining framework of the media system, includes many socio-political factors conditioned by structural changes within the society of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last 25 years. The complete cultural and political deconstruction of the Bosnian society at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century destabilized the internal organization of the political, cultural and economic system, especially in the domain of public communication and organization of the media subsystem. Apart from the numerous current challenges, the development of a unified media policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the establishment of a public media system in accordance with the requirements of the European Union and the interests of all citizens, are among the key issues that state institutions are facing at the moment. This paper primarily deals with the analysis of the European Commission’s annual reports on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress in the process of implementing reforms in the media policy sector and based on these annual reports it suggests the key factors for future national media policy definition. The goal is to establish a national media policy and reform the communication system in a broader context as a political, cultural and economic issue, i.e., as an institutionally agreed path for political compromise, integration of society and definition of collective identities.

Representing Dutch Older Adults During COVID-19: What Can We Learn?

From the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic older adults have been at the heart of public debate. Early articles argued that public representation of older persons displayed a a resurgence of ageist stereotypes and beliefs in (inter)national media (e.g. Ayalon et al. 2020, Fraser et al 2020, Lichtenstein 2020, Sotomayer et al. 2020). Yet studies confirming this are absent up to now. In this paper, we present findings on the representation of Dutch older adults during the first six months of the COVID-19 crisis in The Netherlands. We analysed 1141 articles about older adults of the five largest newspapers using quantitative content analyses and discourse analysis to systematically explore patterns, sentiments and meaning in the articles. We show that the majority of these articles were published in general news and that older adults were rarely (2%) cited in these articles. Most prominent adjectives were vulnerable and weak. Most prominent substantives were attention, long-term care facility and loneliness. The sentiment was largely negative. Additionally, we find three discursive frames predominate: ‘an older people’s disease’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘solidarity’. This evidences that the Dutch reporting on older adults during COVID-19 reproduced a discourse of dependency highlighting and further emphasizing the sociopolitical context before COVID-19 while drawing out earlier ageist tendencies. On the basis of our findings and drawing on advisory experiences, we discuss implications for policy, education and practice and how we can reframe and differently address older adults specifically in terms of language and their more (un)conscious positioning in (public) debate.

Public sphere attitudes towards the rumor sources of the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from community perceptions in Iran

Background In the COVID-19 pandemic, rumors travel far faster than the outbreak itself. The current study aimed to evaluate the factors affecting the attitudes of individuals towards the rumors-producing media in Iran. Methods An online cross-sectional survey was conducted in Iran in March 2020 on the source of information and rumors, along with the perception of individuals regarding the reasons for rumors propagation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results Results showed that the majority of the participants (59.3%) believed that social media were the main source of rumors. The lack of a reliable and formal news resource was also considered the most common cause of rumoring by the participants (63.6%). An evaluation was carried out to identify the main source of misinformation and rumors. Results showed that Retired participants considered foreign media (P < 0.001) as the main resource. The middle-income level participants believed that social media (P < 0.001) were the main source. In this regard, the highly educated participants (P < 0.001), government employees, and middle-income individuals (P = 0.008) believed that national media produced rumors. Conclusion Although findings were achieved during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities immediately introduced the national media as a reliable news resource, which allowed both media and its journalists to reduce the gap between themselves and the public sphere. It was suggested that social networks and foreign media be more accountable in pandemics.