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1 – 10 of 118The idea that user comments on journalistic articles would help to increase the quality of the media has long been greeted with enthusiasm. By now, however, these high hopes have…
Abstract
Purpose
The idea that user comments on journalistic articles would help to increase the quality of the media has long been greeted with enthusiasm. By now, however, these high hopes have mostly evaporated. Practical experience has shown that user participation does not automatically lead to better journalism but may also result in hate speech and systematic trolling – thus having a dysfunctional impact on journalistic actors. Although empirical journalism research has made it possible to describe various kinds of disruptive follow-up communication on journalistic platforms, it has not yet succeeded in explaining what exactly drives certain users to indulge in flaming and trolling. This paper intends to fill this gap.
Design/methodology/approach
It does so on the basis of problem-centered interviews with media users who regularly publish negative comments on news websites.
Findings
The evaluation allows for a nuanced view on current phenomena of dysfunctional follow-up communication on journalistic news sites. It shows that the typical “troll” does not exist. Instead, it seems to be more appropriate to differentiate disruptive commenters according to their varying backgrounds and motives. Quite often, the interviewed users display a distinct political (or other) devotion to a certain cause that rather makes them appear as “warriors of faith.” However, they are united in their dissatisfaction with the quality of the (mass) media, which they attack critically and often with a harsh tone.
Originality/value
The study reflects these differences by developing a typology of dysfunctional online commenters. By helping to understand their aims and intentions, it contributes to the development of sustainable strategies for stimulating constructive user participation in a post-truth age.
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This short chapter is an introduction to my 2018 book: The Ethics of Surveillance: An Introduction (Macnish, 2018). It is provided at the start of this PRO-RES collection of…
Abstract
This short chapter is an introduction to my 2018 book: The Ethics of Surveillance: An Introduction (Macnish, 2018). It is provided at the start of this PRO-RES collection of essays because it anticipates and supplements the range of issues covered in this collection and lays out some of the fundamental considerations necessary to ensure if surveillance must be conducted, it will be done as ethically as possible.
When is surveillance justified? We can largely agree that there are cases in which surveillance seems, at least prima facie, to be morally correct: police tracking a suspected mass murderer, domestic state security tracking a spy network, or a spouse uncovering partner’s infidelity. At the same time, there are other cases in which surveillance seems clearly not to be justified: the mass surveillance practices of the East German Stasi, an employer watching over an employee to ensure that they do not spend too long in the toilet, or a voyeur watching the subject of his lust undress night after night.
As an introductory text, my book does not seek to provide a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for ethical surveillance. What it does provide is an overview of the current thinking in surveillance ethics, looking at a range of proposed arguments about these questions, and how those arguments might play out in a variety of applied settings. It hence provides a useful and accessible volume for policymakers wishing to rapidly get up to speed on developments in surveillance and the accompanying ethical discussions.
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S. J. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas
Rights and duties are involved in every area of business and markets, and society and governments. Most often, rights and duties involve serious ethical and moral issues of…
Abstract
Executive Summary
Rights and duties are involved in every area of business and markets, and society and governments. Most often, rights and duties involve serious ethical and moral issues of conflict. A good theory of the ethics of rights and duties, obligations, and responsibilities will empower us to understand the impact of our actions on various stakeholders. Additionally, a deep understanding of rights and duties could help us to analyze better the impact of our executive actions on various stakeholders and, in particular, to fathom the damaging effects of rights and duties violated by the man-made current financial crisis when seen from an ethical and moral point of view. Our coverage on the ethics of corporate rights and duties will comprise of two parts: Part 1: The Nature of Corporate Business Rights and Duties, and Part 2: Respecting Corporate Rights and Duties. The chapter will feature Newcomb Wellesley Hohfeld’s framework of legal interests such as claims, privileges, power, and immunity and its various applications to contemporary market and corporate executive situations. We illustrate the theory of rights and duties using several cases from the current turbulent markets.
Matthias Karmasin and Denise Voci
This research aims to analyze to what extent sustainability and its related core aspects are integrated in media and communication's curricula of higher education institutions in…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to analyze to what extent sustainability and its related core aspects are integrated in media and communication's curricula of higher education institutions in Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of n = 1068 bachelor and master’s degree programs, as well as their related curricula/program specifications, from 28 European countries were analyzed by means of content analysis.
Findings
Results show that the level of curricular integration of sustainability aspects in the field of media and communication is low (14%) to very low (6%) on module level. In most cases, sustainability remains an abstract guiding principle that is not translated into a dedicated course offer. This can indicate the difficulty of operationalizing such a concept as sustainability, which is experienced by not only higher education institutions but also policy and society as a whole. In addition, the results leave space for a reflection on the social and educational responsibility of higher education institutions.
Research limitations/implications
The authors are aware that not all teaching (content) is depicted in curricula. Especially where teaching is research-based, The authors assume that sustainability (communication) is more present as the curricula' analysis can represent it. In addition, the fact of solely investigating English language curricula can be seen as a further limitation.
Originality/value
This research is one of the few attempts to verify the actual integration level of sustainability aspects in the curricula of a specific sustainability-relevant discipline, which is neither conducted as a case study nor as a single-country analysis.
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Indrek Ibrus and Alessandro Nanì
This chapter concludes the book on cross-innovation between audiovisual media industries and three other sectors – education, health care and tourism. It emphasises, first, the…
Abstract
This chapter concludes the book on cross-innovation between audiovisual media industries and three other sectors – education, health care and tourism. It emphasises, first, the importance of platformisation as a socio-economic and technological process in framing all cross-innovation processes. It highlights how the rather full platformisation of tourism has negatively affected the interest of the tourism industry small and medium-sized enterprises to cooperate with local media and gaming industries in search of new solutions. Relatedly it proposes a generic conflict between platformisation of specific fields and the health of thematic local cross-innovation systems involving media and creative sectors. It then discusses that the inherent fragmentation of the health and education sectors has not allowed their international platformisation, but constitutes challenges to innovators interested in international scalability. It also discusses the reasons why two publicly coordinated cross-innovation processes – one involving the use of virtual reality in health care and another using augmented reality – have given different results – one a relative success and the other not as of yet. At the end of the chapter final definitions of cross-innovation are offered and the operationalisation of the term and the associated conceptual approach are assessed.
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22 July 2011, saw the biggest domestic terror event in Norway since World War II. On this day, a right-wing terrorist placed a bomb in front of the Norwegian government building…
Abstract
22 July 2011, saw the biggest domestic terror event in Norway since World War II. On this day, a right-wing terrorist placed a bomb in front of the Norwegian government building, where the prime minister had his office at the time. Later, the same perpetrator dressed up as a policeman and tricked his way into a political youth camp, where 69 mostly young people were killed. The present case study involves the leading national online news provider, VG, whose website, VG Nett, was Norway’s most-read online news site at the time of the attack. The study addresses the research gap of how news workers and managers see the potential of the affordances of digital media during crisis events. Furthermore, the study looks at how two different discourses of professionalism, the occupational and the organisational, informed journalists’ use of technological and social media affordances during this terror event, and at how online journalists and management reflect upon and continue to refine these approaches five years later. This study stresses the importance of a clear understanding of the decision-making processes that actually guide the handling of those affordances during a crisis event. Ultimately, this study questions not the perceived tension between the two discourses of professionalism, but their relative impact upon domestic crisis journalism in the technological realm.
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Naveen Mishra, Abduraoof Ahmed Ismail and Sanaa Juma Al Hadabi
This study explores the reasons behind the popularity of majoring in Public Relations as opposed to Journalism or Digital Media among mass communications undergraduates in Oman…
Abstract
This study explores the reasons behind the popularity of majoring in Public Relations as opposed to Journalism or Digital Media among mass communications undergraduates in Oman. It attempts to gain insight into the factors influencing students’ decision-making process in selecting their major. It explores factors such as choice of major and sources of information that shape students’ knowledge and perception of the majors, using variables such as knowledge of job market, knowledge of curriculum, information sources and personal influences shaping major choice and selection. The study confirms that perception of the job market is a crucial factor in the selection of the majors. It also reveals that family plays a crucial role in influencing students’ decision-making process while choosing a major. The study concludes that strengthening the role of the academic advisor and educating students on course content and learning outcomes can increase the acceptance of less popular majors among communication undergraduates. The study is relevant in the context that the falling numbers of student enrolments in some areas of media studies could lead to a decline in teaching and research activities in those areas, in addition to a possible shortfall of specific skilled professionals in the national labour market pool.
Najat AlSaied and Fokiya Akhtar
A variety of alternate technology-enhanced teaching approaches are now available to university students to broaden their learning experiences and complement conventional…
Abstract
Purpose
A variety of alternate technology-enhanced teaching approaches are now available to university students to broaden their learning experiences and complement conventional face-to-face teaching. This paper aims to outline a study conducted at an English Medium Instruction (EMI) University in the Arabian Gulf where students were studying media. The study explored an innovative teaching approach that sought to enhance the students’ interaction with mobile phone applications as part of their learning experiences during the course.
Design/methodology/approach
The focus of the study was on enhancing the students’ English writing skills such as vocabulary, spelling and grammar and on improving their technical skills such as in video production. The study collected both quantitative and qualitative data.
Findings
The results indicated that mobile phone applications were helpful in improving students’ journalistic writing skills where they had a good level of proficiency in English, more so than students with poor English who are more dependent on traditional learning methods. Students also benefitted from mobile phone video production workshops that were intensive and creative. Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that courses and labs in media courses have skilled technicians that can train students in creative mobile phone video production while faculty members need to be trained and proactively encouraged to use mobile phones for teaching and learning purposes.
Originality/value
wBased on the results of this study, it is recommended that courses and labs in media courses have skilled technicians that can train students in creative mobile phone video production while faculty members need to be trained and proactively encouraged to use mobile phones for teaching and learning purposes.
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