Global Links (Asynchronous - Online Only)
Political Economy of the Haitian Media: A Highly Politicized System View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wisnique Panier
Our paper focuses on the political economy of the Haitian media, i.e., on the material (economic and technical) working conditions of the media and the work of journalists in relation to power structures. The Haitian media system has changed over the past six decades under the influence of three sets of factors: linguistic, democratic, and technological, which are leading to significant changes in the economic model of the Haitian media and in their relations with political structures. In our study, we analyze the political and economic logics that under and cite the functioning of Haiti’s media. We examine both the elements of transformation and continuity in the Haitian media system under the influence of political and economic structures. This study is part of a multiple theoretical perspective, including the systemic applied to the media and the metaphor of the public communication contract. It is based on observational, maintenance and documentary data. We consider, on the one hand, elements of change in relations between the actors of the system and on the other hand we try to highlight the structural inertia of the media system especially its different forms of politicization and the continuity of the predominance of an economic and political elite in the media space. We analyze the relationship between the economic model and the politicization of the media, which leads us to consider the conditions of economic precariousness of journalists and the different strategies put in place by them to try to get out of poverty.
Featured Migrants, Pandemic, and Mobile Media: Usage of Smart Phone Applications by Internal Migrant Workers during COVID-19 in India View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amoolya Rajappa
Mobile media is intricately interwoven into the public and private lives of migrant workers because it brings together multiple, previously divergent functions. A wide array of activities made available by the media technologies in smart phones- audio and video content, GPS, and internet facilities- is useful for migrants to plot their course through the unregulated labour markets in urban spaces. The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent migrant exodus in India reveals a startling range of diversification of mobile media usage and consumption among migrant labourers. This paper charts out the many ways in which the pandemic forced them to find more urgent, meaningful uses for mobile-led media applications, turning them into producers of their own symbolic space. The study, in attempting to understand how migrant workers use various Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) facilities to represent their own voices, issues and concerns, also examines how they navigate/negotiate hostile media channels in crisis situations. Drawing on reports that assessed the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on internal migrant workers and ethnographic interviews, the paper reiterates the importance of educating migrant workers on the access and correct usage of valuable mobile media applications.
Propaganda, Pandemic, and War: Three Years of Online Conversations about NATO – a Network Perspective View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dana C. Sultanescu
NATO is an essential source of security for Eastern Europe, a region at the confluence of many propaganda efforts from powerful geopolitical actors. What people in this region discuss about NATO on social media is interesting from this point of view alone, since it can function as an indicator of the resilience of their trust in democratic principles and institutions. But in 2020 an unprecedented pandemic started, with NATO as an institutional actor involved in the crisis reaction. Then, in late 2021 and early 2022, NATO came to the forefront even more, due to the upheaval generated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. How did online communicators and communication flows about NATO evolve and change in a country like Romania, close to the Ukraine conflict and to the perpetual propaganda wars in the region? Using visual network analysis on Big Data, I employ both visualizations and network metrics to understand the evolution of actors and communities around a topic of utmost importance, in the context of the recent evolutions regarding regional and global security.
Political Instrumentalization of Technical Images of Warfare by Modern States and Media Effects: A Contemporary Study of the Turkish and Russian Cases View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ufuk Gürbüzdal
This study questions the modern states’ political instrumentalization of technical images of modern warfare by the media and the media effects of the images on the audience along two research questions. First, how and in which political contexts modern states politically instrumentalize the media circulation of technical images of modern warfare? Second, during the reception process, how and in which political contexts the technical images and their media circulation condition the audience’s views and opinions about the outcomes of wars? Accordingly, the study has two hypotheses. The initial hypothesis asserts that modern states take advantage of the media circulation of the technical images to propagate the idea that their military operations are cleanly held technical operations in which there is no harm to civilians. The subsequent hypothesis claims that the technical images and their media circulation put the audience in a position from which it is harder to intellectually grasp the operational processes/contexts and social consequences of wars. Wars are real phenomena with tangible outcomes. However, technical visual representations of wars disseminated by modern states make it more difficult for the audience to grasp military processes and social consequences of wars.
Philippine Press Pushes Back: Reterritorializing Youtube and Tiktok to Fight Disinformation that Elected a Dictator's Son View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Aileen Macalintal
Disinformation was the major campaign driver of the recently elected president of the Philippines, son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This study looks at how media stakeholders in the Philippines are resisting the tsunami of disinformation that continue to attack the credibility of journalism, history, and other fact-based fields of specialization. Amid threats of red-tagging, closure of operations, law suits, and other forms of state-backed intimidation, media and academic institutions in the Philippines push back using the very platforms that were weaponized to spread infodemic: Youtube and TikTok. There is no silver bullet for this crisis of disinformation. However, the study enriches academic discourse on how media institutions might set to protect Philippine society from historical revisionism and other setbacks to democracy.
Refugee Crisis and Journalism: Alan Kurdi's Image Change the Narrative in European News Coverage View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alonit Berenson
Extensive attention has been devoted in recent years by the international media and scholars to refugee crisis in Europe. Despite the extensive literature on global media coverage of the refugee crisis in Europe, none has used mixed research. Using combined qualitative research and statistical test, analysing a sample of 60 articles (between 26.8 – 10.9, 2015), from UK, France and Germany – one week before and after the publication of the picture (26.8 – 10.9, 2015). This study examines news coverage of the refugee crisis during the photograph exposure of Alan Kurdi – the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned to death in the Mediterranean Sea-shore on his way to Europe. Based on an inductive thematic analysis, five main themes are in the centre of the analysis: (a) coverage' views of the refugee crisis; (b) coverage' views of the refugee; (c) EU policy on the refugee crisis; (d) coverage' attitude towards refugees; (e) Reasons for the absorption or non-absorption of refugees. Via statistical analysis of the narrative frames the findings show that the image of Alan Kurdi played a central role of changing the news coverage narrative to supportive the absorbing the refugees but in different context in different country. We conclude that before Kurdi's photograph publication, the media's framing and public opinion towards refugees and its crisis were controversial; Sometimes, refugees denoted uncovered immigrants, but after its publication, media's framing changed to a more humanitarian view.
