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Hit by an unprecedented financial crisis, the Greek society has been also swept away by an acute political crisis, rising political polarisation and social unrest. At the same time, over the last decade, Greece has faced an unparalleled state of emergency, with thousands of refugees and immigrants entering every year and remaining in the country, often in extremely difficult living conditions leading to ‘an exceptional crisis within the crisis’. In fact, during the recent years, immigration and the ‘refugee crisis’ have been among the most controversial topics on the Greek policy agenda and one of the principal issues that shapes public discourse and raises the most questions about social cohesion and the fundamental values of the Greek society. Media representations of the refugee and migrant ‘crisis’ have played a significant role in how this controversial issue is presented in the Greek public discourse as well as in how people perceive and respond to it. Within this context and having as a starting point the theoretical approach of peace journalism, this chapter explores the ways in which four national Greek newspapers portrayed immigration within different periods of the Greek crisis between January 2011 and September 2015. Research results reveal two different periods in the analysed news stories, one between 2011 and 2014, when immigration was portrayed as a ‘domestic problem’ and the other, in 2015, when the situation was designated as a ‘European refugee crisis’. In both cases, however, it was evident that immigration was positioned high on the agenda of the Greek newspapers, despite major political events taking place within the same periods. Findings were presented and discussed on four different but interrelated levels: immigration (1) as a source of conflict and polarisation, (2) as a political issue, (3) through securitisation and victimhood and, ultimately, (4) through a ‘journalism of conventions’ lens, with very important consequences on the quality of information (extensive lack of solutions related to immigration and asylum issues, absence of refugees' voice, insufficient context, among others).

To discuss our experiences producing a short documentary film focused on a sport-related environmental issue – and reflect on our attempts throughout production to “do” what we are calling “Environmental Sports Journalism” (ESJ).

Following ESJ principles, and in collaboration with Vancouver-based filmmakers, we produced a short documentary entitled, Mount Gariwang: An Olympic Casualty, about the destruction of an ancient forest for a sport mega-event (i.e., the PyeongChang Olympics). We discuss and reflect on our approach and methods for producing the documentary, and identify key issues faced throughout the process – as we attempted to negotiate the intricacies of documentary work and collaboration between academics and media producers, while attending to a set of principles for producing “Environmental Sports Journalism.”

We reflect on strategies used and challenges faced when attempting to produce a short film on a sport-related environmental issue. We note our attempt to: (1) include interview segments with definitions of key concepts and how they are relevant to power relations around sport mega-events; (2) value the lives and voices of local and marginalized people – while noting problems we faced providing adequate context; (3) focus on problems of nonhumans as well as humans – and the challenges we faced including nonhuman issues and perspectives, challenges that reflected the limits of our chosen data collection and reporting techniques; (4) offer some form of hope and identify alternatives around an event that we were critical of; and (5) highlight the complexities of prioritizing social and environmental justice (i.e., taking a side) while attempting to offer what we might think of as “balanced” coverage.

This chapter illuminated barriers we faced in our attempts to produce “excellent” coverage, and in going from media critics to critical media producers. Our hope is to inspire reflection on what is possible around the production of “excellent” sport-related environmental journalism, and to contribute to thinking about the pursuit of public sociology through media.

Although involvement in documentary-making as academics is not new, our attempt to apply principles associated with environmental journalism to the study of sport-related environmental and social problems is in some ways novel, and therefore our reflections on our experiences are also in some ways novel.

To outline strategies for balancing a critical approach to sport for development and peace (SDP) interventions with approaches that highlight the potentially positive outcomes of SDP. Two examples of attempts to balance these approaches are highlighted. One is a critical analysis of responses to sport-related environmental problems. The other is a study of how a sport-related reconciliation event led by celebrity athletes was successfully organized.

In the first part of the chapter, the complexity of the SDP concept (and the terms sport, peace, and development) is discussed along with the challenges of negotiating critical and more optimistic stances on SDP. In the second part, two approaches to navigating between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” stances on SDP are outlined through two case studies.

The two case studies are described along with preliminary findings from studies that were conducted. Each case study is accompanied by a discussion of how the author “middle-walked” between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” positions on SDP. A focus in this section is on how theory, methods, and strategies for reporting findings were accounted for in the process of balancing these distinct positions.

The difficulties attempting to balance critical and optimistic positions are discussed. The difficulties connecting critical analysis with practical suggestions for improving SDP-related work were also outlined.

Walter Lippmann in his 1922 classic “Public Opinion” noted that “the news media are a primary source of those pictures in our heads about the larger world of public affairs, a world that for most citizens is “out of reach, out of sight, out of mind.” Indeed, among the different roles that the mass media performs is one of an information provider and interpreter of world events and policy decisions. The power of the mass media to mould public opinion on issues of national and international significance is well documented. Our knowledge and priorities about public affairs are based on what the media decides to feed us with. In this context, the present chapter seeks to analyze the crucial role essayed by the mass media in ensuring human security by promoting favorable public opinion toward the cause of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. S. Rashid Naim enunciates in “Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia” that a nuclear attack between India and Pakistan even limiting itself to military targets would cause approximately 577,000 deaths in Pakistan and 604,000 deaths in India apart from substantial number of injuries and destruction of property. The knowledge about this impending havoc should reach the grassroots level and this can be accomplished only by the mass media. With global efforts being channelized toward nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, the media and its trend-setting abilities can be harnessed to enlighten the average public about the disasters of a nuclear war. As the role of the mass media becomes more prominent in managing conflicts all over the world, the time is ripe to utilize its immense powers to dilute the level of possible nuclear clashes. A more proactive role of the media is envisioned through the establishment of a “global communication center” dedicated to the publication and broadcast of information advocating the cause of total nuclear disarmament. This center will be the locus of information dissemination and advocacy directed toward nations that possess nuclear weapons and those that are likely to get their hands on them in the near future. While the mass media is certainly not the only actor in the process of nuclear disarmament, it can be a decisive force for nations to choose between “atom for peace” or “atom for war.”

This chapter theorises the Internet in Greece by placing it at the centre of Greek media offering a political economy which recasts it in a culturalist fashion. To achieve this, it critically addresses the country's alleged lag in cyberspace and asks why the Internet's hegemonic role in the advance of neoliberal policies and technoliberalism worldwide was never performed in Greece. It places the countrywide disdain for the technoliberal subject at the core of understanding of why the web mediations where so neatly denied over three decades across industry, policy and research. It centres around Internet remediations to argue that the Internet in Greece has been conceptualised as a nonmedia through the idea of lagging behind, essentially a construct veiling neoliberalism at work. It situates the advent of the web in Greece's media boom to argue that media power, as articulated in Greece, necessarily excluded the web, fetishising terrestrial broadcasting on the way to the neoliberal dismantling of culture, the media and everyday life, way before the Troika.

Purpose: This study is concerned with media representation of crime in the Israeli press. It examines the pattern of offenses reported in two daily newspapers of seemingly different characteristics, the “elitist” Haaretz and the “popular” Israel Hayom. Methodology/approach: Crime reports appeared in the news pages during November 2016 were content analyzed in both newspapers by using a coding scheme, which operationalized several variables relating to type of crime, characteristics of offenders and victims, and court proceedings. Findings: Violent and sex offenses featured disproportionately in the news reports in both newspapers, while conventional property offenses were under-reported relative to their prevalence in official crime statistics. In terms of the characteristics of offenders and victims, the vast majority of offenders portrayed in crime stories were adult Jewish males. Women were more likely to appear as victims of crime rather than perpetrators, and more likely to appear as victims of sex offenses rather than other offenses. Research limitations: This study was based on an analysis of crime stories which appeared in two newspapers during one-month period of time. Future research should extend the sample size and collect data from a longer period of time and from additional media outlets. Originality/value: Media coverage of crime stories has not yet been researched in Israel. Beyond the interest in the Israeli case or the potential contribution to comparative global knowledge, the value of the study may lie in expanding the lens of scholarship of media’s construction of crime.

The restrictive measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to everything across the world. The global crisis hit every sphere of life. The mobility restrictive nature of the pandemic was a major blow to the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. For a country like Pakistan, with an unstable economy and struggling tourism, the pandemic served as ground zero. This chapter critically examines tourism dimensions in Pakistan and how it sustained the impact of various crises. It pays attention to the concepts of vulnerability, social and community resilience, and adaptive capacity to provide a theoretical understanding of the revival of tourism in Pakistan. It also considers the impact of COVID-led measures on the tourism industry and corresponding initiatives of the government. The chapter concludes by arguing that Pakistan should carefully monitor and assess the current debates on tourism policies and practices. The chapter suggests that the national tourism strategy should incorporate a mechanism that can address tourism in crises in addition to addressing the environmental, socio-cultural and economic impact of tourism.

Despite increased academic research interest on how media sources represent and impact social realities, there is little emphasis on homelessness representations in street newspapers. The Greek economic crisis echoed socioeconomic changes and inequalities in both mainstream and lesser-known media with various framing representations of homelessness. One Greek journalistic effort born midcrisis was the street paper ‘Schedia’, which merits examining for its popularity and success as a component of the social reintegration program that launched it. Through the lens of our case study on Schedia and drawing mostly on contemporary interdisciplinary approaches from Cultural Studies and Media Communication, we provide a brief literature review on ‘homelessness street journalism’ research and explore theoretical interpretations thereof. We then discuss media discourse and framing of homelessness and whether it reveals utilisation of street journals mainly as tools for raising awareness or for creating income to maintain or augment social reintegration efforts and programs. We content analysed one year of Schedia's issues and examined instances of both perceived and experienced homelessness representations and causes therein, offering a snapshot of the ways and extent to which Schedia represents homeless voices. Lastly, through the example of Schedia, we discuss whether street media lends itself best as a voice for democratic empowerment of the homeless or as an identity-building intermediary tool for capacitating transformative social reintegration.