Global Media Journal

Journalists made up an important part in the first generation of bloggers. Robinson (2006) characterizes journalistic blogs in following ways: a reporter’s notebook of news tidbits and incidentals; a straight column of opinion; a question-and-answer format by editors; a readership forum; a confessional diary written by the reporter about his or her beat; a round-up of news summaries that promote the print publication; and a rumor-mill that reporter uses as an off-the-record account.  Robinson does not provide quantitative data to support his arguments. The categorization, however, indicates how blogs serve journalism in various ways. Several studies have focused on how blogs change journalists’ life and work practices. Carison (2007) notes that blogging presents journalists an opportunity to make journalism more transparent. Lowrey and Mackay (2008) pointed out that blogs affect the ways journalists practice their profession, such as reporting, using blogs as news sources and d

In a broad sense, a Geographic Information System – or GIS as it is commonly referred to – is a tool that allows for the storage, processing, and analysis of spatial data (DeMers, 1997; Tomlinson, 2003). At the same time, and especially in the contemporary context, the term GIS defies any singular definition.  Once primarily the domain of skilled users and dependent upon at least a relatively high level of computing capacity, GIS functionality is now present in many people’s daily lives, including in common mobile telecommunication devices. In short, in today’s world GIS has a vast array of applications and different types of users, and it is ever-evolving. Furthermore, GIS has increasingly grown to utilize, and benefit from, intelligent networks. These networks provide a key platform for much of the data that is utilized and shared in the use of GIS applications.   Read More>>>>>>

This study examines how U.S. public diplomacy directed toward the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and public diplomacy from the MENA to other regions, including the U.S., uses social media.  It analyzes how messages regarding recent events in the MENA are constructed for Western audiences, how public diplomacy rises from this construction, and the resulting the benefits and challenges within intercultural communication practice. Utilizing a framework for social media flow the processes of gatekeeping are examined, from both state and non-state actors representing MENA voices, and western actors who receive those voices, to illustrate public diplomacy from the MENA is a “glocal” construct of the traditions of both of those localities. Read More>>>>>>>

Students face immense challenges in developing the skills necessary to produce content for consumption in a mobile environment. Not only is it a quickly changing medium, requiring immense flexibility with the tools used to create content, but mobile devices are giving students the ability to tell a story in any way they see fit – be it text, photos, videos, or all of the above.  This study examined via pre- and post-test responses students’ perceptions of boundary-free storytelling—a limitless exploration of mobile devices, content delivery and message development. However, the act of pushing the students beyond their comfort zones uncovered some gaps in news consumption, technology exposure and confidence with traditional videography. Read More>>>>>>

For many Internet advocates the social media provides an electronic agora to allow for alternative issues to be raised, framed and effectively debated.  It is contended citizens may enjoy a real-time interactive access with one another to transmit ideas, by-pass authorities, challenge autocracies and affect greater forms of expression against state power. Thus, the social media allows for many-to-many or point-to point forms of communication. Most especially, online social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, have facilitated opportunities for grassroots communication, deliberation and discussion. Read More>>>>>>>>

Before entering the thickets of theory, it is worth pointing out that the latino americanidad of Latin American TV programming has long been a matter of great debate. With respect to an understanding of national origins and cultural values, there are commonly found three distinct views of such programming.  One view, common within regional scholarship, accentuates the foreign values of Latin American productions (Trejo, 1985; Muraro, 1987; Oliveira, 1990; Mazziotti, 1996). A second, more common within English-language scholarship, emphasizes the Latin-ness of local productions (Straubhaar, 1984 and 1991; Rogers & Antola, 1985; Tomlinson, 1991; Reeves, 1993; Martín-Barbero, 1993 and 1995), although occasionally cases such claims are based less upon programs’ content than on their success in displacing U.S. imports and in being sold as exports. Read More>>>>

Indigenous languages worldwide are in serious trouble. There is undisputable evidence put forth by researchers in a diversity of fields—from the social sciences to the natural sciences—that paints a dire picture of what the languaged world will look like within the next two decades. By acknowledging the work of community members, language education stakeholders and scholars who have called attention to endangered Indigenous languages (Fishman, 1991; 1996), this article addresses opportunities and tensions in Indigenous language revitalization through the learning activities of postsecondary student language innovators in the U.S. Read More>>>>>>

This paper uses Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm to examine Israel’s efforts to shape the narrative of the violent confrontation and loss of life of activists aboard the Mavi Marmara, part of the Gaza “Freedom Flotilla,” in May 2010.  In an exploratory application of Fisher’s narrative paradigm to cyber-diplomacy, this research argues that Israel could not shift blame largely because its concerted and sustained YouTube campaign failed the tests of narrative logic: narrative probability and narrative fidelity. Read More>>>>>>>

Over the past fifteen years, traditional understandings of the roles occupied by audiences and producers of mass communications have been challenged in light of the Internet and advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) that increasingly allow users to create their own content online.  Many have cited the variety of opportunities for audience interactivity in web based media and the growing universe of user-generated content (UGC) online as evidence of a fundamental alteration to the way messages are created and valued within societies across the globe (Acar 2008; Boyd and Ellison 2007; van Dijck 2009; Gonzales and Hancock 2008; Walther 1996). Read More>>>>>

The precarization of labor relations in the world negatively affected modern conditions of Russian society development. Precarizated work associated with uncertainty and insecurity in socio-economic relations, unhealthy competition, flexibility of labor relations, different social classes of workers etc. deforms professional identity and decreases its potential integration. The purpose of this article is to study the integrative and disintegrative nature of professional identity under institutional changes in Russian society. In the social sciences, professional identity is most often considered at the level of professional identification, social and group interaction in professional circle. At the same time, professional identity has a macro-social determination, which is especially important in the context of deforming social and labor relations in the modern world. Read More>>>>

Arab media burst onto the North American radar screen when Al-Jazeera, a Qatari all news pan-Arab satellite television station, scooped the world's media with its coverage of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Until then, with the exception of counted academic experts and a few articles and opinion pieces in the leading national newspapers, the Arab mass media had not received much attention in American public discourse.  Because of this lack of interest, the development of the mass media in Arab countries, their socio-cultural impact and their political implications, remain poorly understood. For this reason, this article aims at introducing Arab media from a historical perspective, focusing on satellite television broadcasting, and analyzing the relationship between that media sector and the phenomenon of globalization.   Read More>>>>>

The international War on Terror and recent events in our immediate region, particularly Indonesia, have thrown a sudden spotlight on Australian reporting of the Asia Pacific. But Australia has a long history of journalism, travel writing and documentary filmmaking here.  This paper draws on Edward Said’s writings on ‘orientalism’ to bring an historical perspective to bear on contemporary factual genres and practices. It highlights three cases, focusing on Indonesia and Papua New Guinea: the travel writing and journalism of Frank Clune in the late thirties and early forties (To the Isles of Spice, 1944), the agit-prop filmmaking of Joris Ivens and the Waterside Workers Federation (Indonesia Calling, 1948), and the explosion of documentary work that came out of Papua New Guinea, Australia’s only true colony, from the early 1970s. Read More>>>>>>

My aim in this article is to go beyond simply describing what happened in Rwanda, as this has been done in detail elsewhere. 1 My focus is upon the actual communicative process of ‘telling’. I will therefore investigate some of the ways that people both inside and outside Rwanda were told about what happened in 1994.  Behind this analysis is a simple question: What can be learnt from the uses of the local media in Rwanda at this time and the subsequent global coverage of the Rwandan Genocide? As we shall see the case of ‘telling people about’ the Rwandan genocide raises a number of important questions, including what is the relation between local and global media in moments of confusion and violence? Given the importance attributed to religion, especially Catholicism in Rwanda’s recent history, it also raises questions about how religious expression and themes are drawn upon, adapted or ignored in the process of telling. Read More>>>>

From the turn of the century, Martyr Square in downtown Beirut, Lebanon has been the scene for myriad political events. Beginning in the mid-seventies, Martyr Square was part of the Green Line that saw vicious fighting during the arduous fifteen-year civil war fought along religious identities.  More recently, and after a period of peaceful coexistence among the Lebanese, on the eve of February 14, 2005, the Square district witnessed yet another event of an immense magnitude. Former Prime Minister and tycoon Rafiq Hariri was assassinated. This event caused a huge wave of protests and demonstrations claiming the strength of the Lebanese people and their steadfastness against ‘foreign’ aggression. In essence, this public outcry was a reaction to a tragedy that reminded the Lebanese of the horrors of war and resulted in a series of major transformations in the country. Read More>>>>>>>>