Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers

Climate change conferences had wide media coverage – be it on newspaper, radio, television or the internet. The terms such as ‘climate change', ‘global warming', and ‘El Nino' are gaining popularity among the public. This study examines the news coverage of climate change issues in the major daily newspapers—The Times of India, The Hindu in English, and the Dina Thanthi, Dinamalar, and Dinamani in regional language (Tamil)—for the calendar years 2014 and 2015. This chapter describes how climate change influences nature and human life, and it is the basis for social and economic development. The news coverage of climate change and sustainability issues helps the reader better understand the concepts and perspectives of environment. Climate change communication in regional newspapers and local news stories may increase the public's interest and knowledge level regarding climate change and sustainability issues.

The Role of ‘Delegated Transferable Vote' for Supporting Tactical Voting in First-Past-the-Post Elections

This chapter investigates a method of counting votes called ‘Delegated Transferable Vote' (DTV) as a means to ensure that every vote counts by enabling voters to be able to vote for the candidate they want in the knowledge that their vote will be tactically allocated by the candidate they vote for if they get less than 50% of the vote. The theory is that if a voter trusts someone enough to vote for them then they should trust them to allocate their vote to a candidate with similar policies or political philosophies to them. The chapter finds that in elections where the candidates want to keep out a particular candidate or party, such as because they have a hegemony, then DTV can be effective in changing the outcome. However, in election where tactical voting has already taken place, such as where people vote on issues instead of party lines, then the outcome of counting votes using DTV is on the whole not different from the one presently used in the United Kingdom, which is First-Past-the-Post (FPTP).

Facebook Aesthetics

What is the relationship between digital imaginaries and whiteness? Following recent calls to investigate the juncture between whiteness and the internet, this chapter seeks to provide a critique of imagery posted on Facebook in the aftermath of 'terror attacks' in Paris 2015. The author renders these images as structured by deep forms of white world-making, ways of thinking and feeling that reproduce whiteness as ethically superior, innocent, and in need of preserving at the cost of non-white knowledges and peoples. In this chapter, the author argues that the internet provides yet another site for whiteness to engage in white world-making by extending the white gaze to digital platforms in the service of transforming the violence of Paris into a racialised attack on white innocence. As such, the Paris images are understood as responding to and perpetuating a digital imaginary in which the political capacities of images relate to an ethics of violence to the non-white Muslim body.

Fake Photos in the European Refugee Crisis

The escalation of fake news and images during times of crisis and uncertainty is not a new phenomenon, but something quantitatively and qualitatively different is happening now. This chapter adopts an aesthetic approach to locate fake images in the gap between a form of representation and the representation itself. Anxiety with fake images deployed by the radical right during the refugee crisis is about a politics of manipulation within that gap, which enables an image to be re-appropriated or altered fundamentally in ways that reorder the range of possible interpretations to fit a pre-determined narrative. While fake images are not their exclusive preserve, the radical right is widely associated with them, and this chapter explores an aesthetic conceptualisation of fake images through an analysis of the La Vlora fake image, which was used to buttress their invasion narrative. The chapter argues that the affective power of re-imaging was derived from a nativist ideology and a storyline that echoed a dystopic, anti-immigration novel that has assumed cult status in extremist circles.

‘No Line on the Horizon'

This chapter applies and extends the concept of social media logic to assess the politics of immersive storytelling on digital platforms. These politics are considered in the light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which argues that mass media in the 20th century gained power by developing a commanding discourse that guides the organization of the public sphere. The shift to social media logic in the 21st century, with its grounding principles of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication, influenced a new discourse on the logics of digital ecosystems. Digital platforms such as Facebook are offering all-surrounding mediated environments to communicate in virtual reality (‘Horizon') as well as immersive narratives such as Mr. Robot VR. This chapter provides an overview of the changing dynamics within Facebook's VR strategy as well as an understanding of the politics of immersive storytelling and its underlying principles of programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality, which define immersive technologies in the 21st century.

Use of Mobiles for Promoting Agriculture in Puducherry, India

This research work is based on an empirical investigation into mobile advisory services co-created by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), and the agriculture farmers' community of the Union Territory of Puducherry, India. This research work investigates the effectiveness of the agricultural extension tool of mobile phone audio messages among farmers in areas of rural in Puducherry, during the years 2010-2013. The research work analysed farmers' benefits, gaps in mobile advisory services (MAS), perception of mobile messages, socio-demographic, and socio-economic data. As a result, farmers were able to acquire knowledge and skills relating to their livelihoods and make timely decisions to cope with emerging issues and trends in agriculture to an extent of diversifying their cropping patterns. These messages enhanced their knowledge in crop management, latest farming technologies, and agriculture-related government schemes and entitlements, and post-harvest techniques along with care and management of livestock.

Environmental Campaigns in Traditional and Social Media

This chapter describes how the environment is a significant part of today's world. The media has the responsibility of educating the audience about the prevailing environmental issues such as pollution, global warming, and climate change as they threaten humankind and sustainable development. Environmental campaigns play a major role in creating awareness about environmental issues and its adverse effects on people. This chapter examines the content of environmental campaigns in traditional and social media and its impact on the environmental awareness of different cross-cultural sections of people using a survey. The chapter is designed based on the theory of planned behaviour according to which human action is guided by a number of factors. The findings revealed that the campaigns had many positive benefits and a number of factors were influencing the promotion of environmental awareness. The study tested a few factors based on communication theories and discussions were drawn.

The Pervasive and the Digital

This chapter discusses the trajectory of immersive story worlds by considering four distinct interactive artworks. Blast Theory's, A Machine to See With (2010), is a pervasive fictional experience that enables users, through the technology of their mobile phone, to become immersed within a fictional crime scenario across a real geographical setting. Their latter artwork app, Karen (2015), enables a different type of pervasive immersion through interstitial storytelling that incorporates the medium of the user's smartphone into the virtual narrative space. Dennis Del Favero's art project, Scenario (2011), and Extant's Flatland, by contrast, are interactive and immersive stories that take place in digital spaces that interface with the body in unique ways. This chapter will explore each of these artworks through original interviews the author has conducted with each of the artists.

No Interaction on Instagram

This chapter addresses a neglected issue within the field of social media and political communication. It focuses on interaction processes on Instagram asking how political parties used Instagram—a platform that is centered around images—when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. The focus is on political parties' use of Instagram in the 2014 Swedish national election campaign. This gives an impression of the first attempts of political parties' use of this communication platform. The quantitative content analysis focuses on Instagram images including their captions and comments (posts) that Swedish parties published four weeks prior to Election Day. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Swedish political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers, and the very few interactions taking place did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics. Interaction and deliberation are also not enhanced by the images.

CIO Power Influences the Social Alignment and IT-Business Strategic Alignment Relationship

To give information technology (IT) a more central role in an organization and avoid disrupting the existing executive team power balance, chief information officers (CIOs) should only leverage their power in certain situations. The authors propose CIOs can leverage their expert, prestige, and structural power attributes to influence the social-intellectual alignment relationship versus the social-operational alignment relationship in unique ways. Analyzing data collected from 140 CIOs, the results suggest IT knowledge strengthens the social-strategic alignment relationship, business knowledge, and structural power weaken the social-intellectual alignment relationship, and prestige power has no impact on the social-strategic alignment relationship.