scholarly journals Localizing the Politics of Privacy in Communication and Media Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna E. Möller ◽  
Leyla Dogruel

While previous communication and media research has largely focused on either studying privacy as personal boundary management or made efforts to investigate the structural (legal or economic) condition of privacy, we observe an emergent body of research on the political underpinnings of privacy linking both aspects. A pronounced understanding of the politics of privacy is however lacking. In this contribution, we set out to push this forward by mapping four communication and media perspectives on the political implications of privacy. In order to do so, we recur on Barry’s (2002) distinction of the political and the politics and outline linkages between individual and structural dimensions of privacy. Finally, we argue that the media practice perspective is well suited to offer an analytical tool for the study of the multiple aspects of privacy in a political context.

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yazan Badran ◽  
Enrico De Angelis

The Syrian uprising in 2011 was accompanied by the birth of a new generation of media outlets seeking to offer alternative narratives to those of the regime. After the Kurds gained a certain level of autonomy from the Syrian regime and opposition forces, areas historically inhabited by Kurds (Rojava) have also seen the emergence of local media: for example, the television station Ronahi, magazines and newspapers such as Welat, Buyer and Shar, radio stations such as Arta FM and Welat and the ARA News agency. Indeed, for the first time in their history, Syrian Kurds have the opportunity to have an independent voice in the media landscape. In this paper we map the field of emerging Kurdish media in Syria and analyze some of the main features of these outlets, while situating them in the larger context of emerging Syrian media. Moreover, the paper explores their relationship in the current political context of the Syrian uprising and, especially, of Rojava. In doing so, we analyze the political identity that these media tend to project and address how they position themselves toward the issue of the Kurdish identity in general and in Syria in particular.


2020 ◽  
pp. 175063522095036
Author(s):  
Kajalie Shehreen Islam

This article explores the role of the media as a discursive tool in the commemoration of Bangladesh’s war of liberation. The author critically engages with the notion of mediated memory in the foreground of corporate nationalism. Through a discourse analysis of print advertisements published in Bangladeshi newspapers on the country’s Independence and Victory Days over five decades, she traces the use of nationalism in advertising discourse and the shift from a development-oriented approach to corporate nationalism, with the underlying theme of glorification of war. The study found that nationalistic-based discourse is a key theme of Bangladeshi advertisements published on its days of national significance – history and its heroes, symbols and images, poetry and song, are all used to invoke a banal nationalism. These discursive constructions depend largely on the political context but, as long as the political line is adhered to, advertisers are free to use nationalistic discourse to promote their brands, products and services.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (10) ◽  
pp. 1110-1126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Babette Babich

Günther Anders was a philosopher concerned with the political and social implications of power, both as expressed in the media and its tendency to elide the citizenry and thus the very possibility of democracy and the political implications of our participation in our own subjugation in the image of modern social media beginning with radio and television. Anders was particularly concerned with two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, and he was just as concerned with the so-called ‘peaceful’ uses of nuclear power, what he named our apocalypse-blindness and the urgency of violence. To make this case I draw on Baudrillard on ‘speech without response’ and Gadamer on conversation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-181
Author(s):  
Nandita Haksar

This article argues that although Irom Sharmila’s 16-year-old fast from November 2000 to August 2016 has earned her the status of an icon of non-violent protest, yet she did not seek these appellations; her only aim was to put moral pressure on the government to repeal the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958. The article seeks to assess the efficacy of Irom Sharmila’s protest and how far it has helped or hindered in mobilizing public opinion against the Act. It propounds that the publicity around Irom Sharmila put her on a pedestal and trapped her in her own image, made invisible entire histories of sufferings of people in the northeast, including Manipur, and their struggles against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. The gains of many struggles and efforts were wiped out of the collective memory of the nation and the only image of Manipur was this frail woman with a tube hanging from her nose. The article also argues that there is a kind of fetish in the way the media celebrates non-violence without reference to the political context.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Ruth Malau

<p><em>Countries that embrace the ideology of freedom of the press, the court is of opinion that is commonly encountered in public spaces. Media, in this case could be interpreted as a medium in favor of the public interest which requires the presence of a new color in Libyan politics for 42 years filled with pressure and persecution.</em></p><p><em>Revolutionary period which lasted for most of the year 2011, which then shows how the media have spread the legality of its influence over public opinion. The mass media in Indonesia does have the power to set the political agenda, because democracy gives him legal to do so.</em></p><p><em>However, court opinions that appeared in the Libyan revolution is not because the country embraced the ideology of freedom of the press, but because of the pull-menaraik between freedom of the press with dimensions embedded control during the reign of Gaddafi.</em></p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Sudmann

Abstract The essay critically investigates the media-political dimension of modern AI technology. Rather than examining the political aspects of certain AI-driven applications, the main focus of the paper is centred around the political implications of AI’s technological infrastructure, especially with regard to the machine learning approach that since around 2006 has been called Deep Learning (also known as the simulation of Artificial Neural Networks). Firstly, the paper discusses in how far Deep Learning is a fundamentally opaque black box technology, only partially accessible to human understanding. Secondly, and in relation to the first question, the essay takes a critical look at the agenda and activities of the research company OpenAI that supposedly aims to promote the democratization of AI and tries to make technologies like Deep Learning more accessible and transparent.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Andrea Fumarola

Abstract Electoral accountability is considered the mechanism through which voters hold governments responsible for their performance. Questioning the traditional approach of economic voting theory, the article focuses on the influence exerted by the political context—comprehensively considered as government clarity of responsibility, availability of governing alternatives, electoral formula, and freedom of the media—on the accountability mechanism in eleven countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using individual and aggregate data collected after the 2014 European Elections by the European Election Study (EES), the present article analyses this process in its double dimension of answerability and enforcement (Schedler 1999). Our findings suggest that voters’ ability to express discontent with economic performance in new European democracies is strongly influenced by specific characteristics of the political context. A stable and cohesive government as well as a free media system, in particular, seem to facilitate performance voting in the region.


Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1430
Author(s):  
Iva Šiđanin ◽  
Biljana Ratković Njegovan ◽  
Bojana Sokolović

Mass immunization of the citizens of the Republic of Serbia began in January 2021. Information on the significance, manner, advantages and consequences of this process was intensively distributed through all communication channels, with the media playing a key role. According to the data of the official institutions for the public health of Serbia, by July 2021 the lowest percentage of vaccinated population was among those between the ages of 18 and 24—only 15% of this demographic had received the vaccine by this point. Given the low turnout of young people for vaccination, in this paper we investigated the general attitude of students in Serbia, as a special category of young people, towards the vaccine against the COVID-19 virus, as well as their attitude regarding information about vaccination in the media. Research was conducted on a sample of 345 students at the University of Novi Sad. The results of the research showed that 42% of students had not been vaccinated and did not plan to do so, 37.4% had received at least one dose of vaccine and 20.6% had not been vaccinated even though they planned to do so. Students who were vaccinated had more confidence in information provided through media channels than those who were not vaccinated. Therefore, it can be concluded that encouraging students to decide in favor of vaccination against the COVID-19 virus should come from the universities where they study as well as the media.


Professare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Claudemir Aparecido Lopes

<p class="resumoabstract">O professor Giorgio Agamben tem elaborado críticas à engenhosa estrutura política ocidental moderna. Avalia os mecanismos de controle estatal, nos quais os denomina ‘dispositivos’, cuja força está na imbricação às normas jurídico-teológicas com seus similares ritos e liturgias. Suas ocorrências e legitimidade preponderam no tecido social cuja organização sistêmica se põe quase como elemento natural e não cultural. O texto tem por objetivo explorar a concepção política de Agamben sobre a política contemporânea, especialmente considerando seu livro: ‘Estado de Exceção’, cuja investigação apresenta a possibilidade de atenuação dos direitos de cidadania e o enfraquecimento da prática da liberdade política e o processo de relação dos indivíduos no meio social através da redução das subjetividades ‘autênticas’. Analisamos ainda a transferência do mundo sacro elaborado pelos teólogos católicos presente na modernidade à política cuja democracia moderna faz do homem (sujeito) tornar-se objeto do poder político. Faz também, reflexão dos conceitos de subjetivação e dessubjetivação relacionando-os às implicações políticas do homem moderno. A pesquisa é bibliográfica com ênfase na análise dos conceitos elaborados por Agamben, especialmente quanto ao ‘dispositivo’. Conclui que o indivíduo ocidental, de modo geral, sofre o processo de dessubjetivação e está ‘nu’, indefeso e alienado politicamente. Ele precisa voltar-se ao processo de ‘profanação’ dos dispositivos para libertar-se das vinculações orientadoras que forçosamente o descaracteriza enquanto ser ativo e livre.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Política. Liberdade. Subjetivação.</p><h3>ABSTRACT</h3><p class="resumoabstract">Professor Giorgio Agamben has been criticizing the ingenious modern Western political structure. It evaluates the mechanisms of state control, in which it calls them 'devices', whose strength lies in the overlap with legal-theological norms with their similar rites and liturgies. Its occurrences and legitimacy preponderate in the social fabric whose systemic organization is almost as a natural and not a cultural element. The text aims to explore Agamben's political conception of contemporary politics, especially considering his book 'State of Exception', whose research presents the possibility of attenuating citizenship rights and weakening the practice of political freedom and the individuals in the social environment through the reduction of 'authentic' subjectivities. We also analyze the transfer of the sacred world elaborated by the Catholic theologians present in the modernity to the politics whose modern democracy makes of the man - subject - to become object of the political power. It also reflects on the concepts of subjectivation and desubjectivation, relating them to the political implications of modern man. The research is bibliographical with emphasis in the analysis of the concepts elaborated by Agamben, especially with regard to the 'device'. He concludes that the Western individual, in general, suffers the process of desubjectivation and is 'naked', defenseless and politically alienated. He must turn to the process of 'desecration' of devices to free himself from the guiding bindings that forcibly demeanes him while being active and free.</p><p class="resumoabstract"><strong>Keywords</strong>: Politics. Freedom. Subjectivity. </p><p> </p>


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