The tussle with trust: Trust in the news media ecology

This article offers a conceptual exploration of the changing notion of trust and distrust in today's news media ecology. Central is the question whether the relationship between the traditional media actors, media organisations, journalists and news users, can be increasingly characterised by distrust. Do we really notice a decline in trust in the news media? And moreover, are these feelings of distrust grounded? In order to answer these questions, we look at the changing economic, technological and societal context and how this might explain the strained relationship between these actors. We find that to a large extent the goals of the media actors diverge or even conflict. Mutually bridging these goals is difficult as they boil down to ideological and normative choices. This requires us to reconsider our ways of looking at trust. Therefore, this article's central argument is that a trusted relationship between the media actors is unlikely to result from a definitive settlement between the actor's conflicting goals. Rather, maintaining a trusted relationship is likely to become a matter of constant renegotiation. For this renegotiation to succeed, transparency and integrity are key. We find inspiration in the recent work of Solove (2001), Nissenbaum (2004) and Mansell (2008, forthcoming) to take a different, more contextual approach towards the notion of trust. As regards the relationship between news organisations and users, we suggest these norms should be negotiated in a balanced and transparent way, giving users an equal say in the process. The relationship between journalists and news users should be guided by a mutual interest in truth telling, whereby users are not only merely seen as consumers, but also as potential contributors to news stories. Policy makers in turn should act as facilitators of such spaces of renegotiation.     

虚拟社会及其监督管理探析

虚拟社会是现实社会在网络中的反映。虚拟社会有别于现实社会的自身的运行特点给其管理带来了极大的挑战。对于虚拟社会的管理,可以将参与主体抽象为两类:组织和个人;可以采取有针对性措施分别加以监督、管理、引导,由此构建健康、文明、和谐的网络空间。     

网络宣传与意识形态话语权研究

网络宣传工作是巩固和增强意识形态话语权的有效途径和手段,意识形态话语权的强弱是检验网络宣传工作成效高低的重要标准。强有力的网络宣传工作有助于我们占领社会舆论的制高点,有助于我们引领多元化思潮的发展方向,是巩固和增强意识形态话语权的有效途径和手段。     

群体性事件中的舆论引导与控制——“英国骚乱”的启示

实践中很多群体性事件处置不力,其关键因素之一就是没有正确认识群体性事件中社会舆论的功能、特点,没有妥善引导和掌控舆论走向,以致加大了处置难度。英国政府在处置2011年8月伦敦骚乱中的成功经验警示我们要转变理念,加强与媒体沟通,主动设置议题,引导和控制社会舆论,从而营造良好舆论氛围,促进群体性事件的妥善解决。     

新媒体在“太阳花学运”中的动员与支持作用

2014年3月18日,台湾部分反对两岸服务贸易协定的学生占领“立法院”,从而引发震动全岛的“太阳花学运”。学运组织者和参与者广泛利用新媒体传播工具来发布和散播反对意见,建构反服贸集体意识,建立学运动员网络,获取国际支持,筹措行动资源,支持各项行动的组织和管理,对于学运的发动和开展发挥了不可或缺的作用。本文首先阐述新媒体的传播特性及其社会应用,继而着重对新媒体在此次学运过程中的作用和影响进行分析,最后探讨新媒体本身所固有的局限性。     

A political economy for social movements and revolution: popular media access,power and cultural hegemony

Abstract

One key marker of mass social movements transitioning to participatory democratic governance is popular media access. This essay argues that democratic media access by public constituencies becomes a site for constructing social revolution and simultaneously a manifest empirical measure of the extent of democratic participation in the production, distribution, and use of communication with new cultural possibilities. The participatory production practices (with citizens producing and hosting their own programs) and the democratic content (of oral histories, local issues, critiques of government and business, and everyday vernacular) reflect the hegemony of emerging ‘Bolivarian’ twenty-first century socialism expressed as popular participation in media production. Bolstered by constitutional changes and public funding, popular social movements of civil society, indigenous, women, and working class organizations have gained revolutionary ground by securing in practice the right of media production. Findings indicate that public and community media (that move beyond alternative sites of local expression and concerns) provide a startling revolutionary contrast to the commercial media operations in every nation. Popular media constructions suggest a new radically democratic cultural hegemony based on human solidarity with collective, participatory decision-making and cooperation offering real possibilities and experiences for increased equality and social justice.     

Innovation in Communication and Media Studies: Reflections from South African Academics

Abstract

This article discusses the possibility of a discipline of communication and media studies that is innovative, pluralistic and open in ways that conduce to development. Based on a set of in-depth interviews with a select group of South African communication and media studies scholars, the article discusses critically how, and if, communication and media studies as a field is innovative. Innovation here talks to a discipline that is imaginatively open to a myriad of different, diverse and divergent contributions relevant to the human endeavour of understanding the world in ways that better humanity. In doing this, the authors critically explore how the discipline is perceived variously by the scholars interviewed as enabling, encompassing and embodying innovation in research, teaching, curricula, theory, methodology, resourcing, and community outreach. As such the article addresses a span of issues that either support or inhibit innovation.     

新媒体时代青年工作面对“六个新逻辑”的思考

青年工作受到来自新媒体技术引发的“技术、市场、资本、社交、劳动、组织”等六个全新的且相互关联的逻辑影响,面对着“系统性压力”。实践中须遵循习近平总书记关于青年工作的重要思想对青年工作引领,充分思量青年工作面对的严峻“形式和任务”,重新“定位和评估”新媒体对中国青年工作的影响。     

Public preferences regarding police facebook posts: a macro-level analysis

ABSTRACT

Police agencies have adopted social media quite widely, but researchers have paid relatively little attention to the phenomenon. To date few studies have explored public reaction to police use of social media. The current study uses a purposive sample with 7,116 police Facebook posts collected from 14 different police agencies during a one-year period to answer two principal research questions: (1) with respect to the number of likes, number of shares, or number of comments regarding different themes present in police Facebook posts, are there differences among police agencies corresponding to differences in the thematic content in their postings? and (2) What factors are related to the public reaction (i.e., likes, shares, comments) to a police Facebook post? The findings from ANOVA and negative binomial regression models clearly indicate that citizens do have definite preferences on police Facebook posts – they are more likely to like and make comments on posts of police personnel and police-public relations, but less likely to share posts of Social Networking Sites. Also, they are more prone to like posts with narratives and pictures, but less likely to favor posts containing hyperlinks. Policy implications and practice guidelines, study limitations, and future research are also discussed.     

Taking Intervention Politics Seriously: Media Debates and the Contestation of African Regional Interventions ‘from Below’

ABSTRACT

Scholars increasingly investigate how the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) is contested and negotiated in practice. Yet little knowledge exists on the politics African regional interventions provoke in the societies affected by such interventions. Based on an analysis of media reports from Burkina Faso and The Gambia, we show that regional interventions are indeed contested locally, irrespective of the means of intervention applied. Our analysis demonstrates how local elites use regional norms and policies in order to claim power and define what is going (wr)on(g). With this, we provide evidence for the (contested) local effects of APSA and for the relevance of media for researching such effects.