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“Look How Many Gays There Are Here”: Digital Technologies and Non-Heterosexual Space in Haikou
Get PDFThis article explores the capacities of digital technologies to disrupt, redefine and multiply urban spaces, creating new ways of seeing and experiencing cities. Based on ethnographic research into the lives of men who desire men in Haikou, People’s Republic of China, and their uses of the location-aware dating app Blued, I show how the city is produced anew as a space imagined and engaged in relation to the perceptible presence of other men who desire men. In a sociopolitical context in which non-heterosexual lives are largely invisible in public spaces, the digitally mediated visibility of Blued users to one another invites a range of social practices through which urban spaces, as well as spatial categories of ‘the urban’ and ‘the rural,’ are reproduced at the intersections of sexuality, space and digital technologies. With its empirical focus on an ‘ordinary’ city in a non-Western context, this article challenges both the Eurocentricity of much digital geographies research and its tendency to focus on global cities
The City as a Continuous Laboratory for Diversity: The Case of Geneva
Get PDFAfter a long period of interest of religious plurality in the nation-state, the sociology of religion, with the impulse of the sociology of migration, has turned its attention to the city. This local level allows us to understand the issues of diversity governance. This article takes advantage of the literature on the governance of migration to apply it to the governance of religious diversity. Using data from the National Congregations Study and available data on Geneva, this article will first show how past responses to the emergence of diversity determine the path for future decisions. To this top-down regulation of religion responds one or more bottom-up strategies of religious communities to find legitimacy in a constraining environment. Based on the unit of the religious community, this study on Geneva provides a historical case of the evolution of diversity. This historical perspective provides the consistency of the current governance of religious diversity, illuminating the struggle for recognition of the minority groups
Inclusion through Sport: A Critical View on Paralympic Legacy from a Historical Perspective
Get PDFThrough its commitment to universalism, the inclusion of disabled people has become an increasingly prominent objective of the Paralympic Games. To achieve this, the organisers rely on the notion of legacy, which refers to the expected effects of major sporting events on host countries. This notion was initially founded on material aspects and then took an interest in certain intangible sides that were spotted within the organiser’s goals and studied in literature. Building on the historical literature about the Paralympic movement’s institutionalization, this article shows that this institutionalization took place in a context of tension between disabled communities, depending on their proximity to the Olympic model. What is the impact of this historical legacy in terms of inclusion of the greater number? By shedding light on the historical perspective of the obstacles encountered in the creation of an ‘all-disabilities’ sporting event, this article aims to discuss and challenge the current perspective on the inclusive legacy of the Paralympic Games
Inclusive Education for Religious Minorities: The Syriacs in Turkey
Get PDFExpanding the scope of inclusion beyond specific groups such as individuals with disabilities has led to the investigation of school systems’ inclusiveness from the perspective of all students. With this in mind, this research investigated the experiences of students and parents belonging to the ancient Syriac community in Turkey, who inhabited Mesopotamia since the inception of Christianity. Obtaining the views of 43 parents and their 46 children through semi-structured interviews, the school system was investigated at a political, cultural, and practical level in terms of the educational inclusion of Syriac individuals. Overall, student and parent views indicated that: (a) policy-making lacked an approach to reach all students and organize support for diversity; (b) school cultures needed to build a community whereby inclusive values were established; and (c) school practices lacked the organization to target and ensure the learning of all and mobilize resources to achieve this aim. Details of findings are included and discussed. Implications address the importance of building schools that consider the increasingly diverse school populations around the world, with a particular focus on cultural and religious diversity
German Media and Coronavirus: Exceptional Communication—Or Just a Catalyst for Existing Tendencies?
Get PDFThe Covid-19 pandemic has immediate effects on science journalism and science communication in general, which in a few cases are atypical and likely to disappear again after the crisis. However, from a German perspective, there is some evidence that the crisis—and its accompanying ‘infodemic’—has, above all, accelerated and made more visible existing developments and deficits as well as an increased need for funding of science journalism
Technologies, Ethics and Journalism’s Relationship with the Public
Get PDFDrones can provide a bird’s eye view of breaking news and events that can be streamed live or used in edited news coverage. Past research has focused on the training and ethics of journalists and drone operators. Little attention, however, has been given to audiences and their acceptance and perception of ethics. We suggest that audiences who are open to personal technology use will perceive news media using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as more ethical in an extension of the Diffusion of Innovation Theory. In a survey (N = 548) of adults living in the United States, we explore the correlates between trust, technology, privacy, and the use of UAVs. Results suggest all three are positively correlated with openness toward drone journalism. We find the audience has preferences for the types of news stories that should be covered using drones. Participants indicated they welcome drone journalism when covering traffic and investigative stories, but not celebrities and politicians. The findings have implications for newsrooms, suggesting transparency and outreach to educate people on the technology could help build trust. Further, the results suggest that Diffusion of Innovation theory can be applied when mediated through news media
Polish Privacy Media Discourse: Privacy as Imposed Policies
Get PDFIn this article we look at the Polish media discourse on privacy. In the analysis, we draw on theoretical approaches that understand privacy as having four dimensions: Relational, participatory, contextual, and technological. Moreover, we seek whether a specific norm of data-related privacy could be defined/redefined within the discourse. Considering the post-communist past that shapes a specific approach to surveillance and the general polarisation of polish media discourse, one would expect the key role of privacy issues in the public sphere. Thus, applying a critical discourse studies analysis, the aim was to capture the character of the so far under-researched privacy in Polish media discourse. We study what types of institutional agents are mentioned as creating privacy policies and what dimensions of privacy they tackle. Moreover, we also try to capture whether the institutional position offers a specific normative understanding of privacy and whether this norm is citizen/user-oriented. The results of the study indicate that: both the media discourse and the normative content of privacy policies are dominated by legal aspects concerned with the issues resulting from EU regulations (i.e., General Data Protection Regulation); privacy policies are institutionally dispersed and monopolised by journalists and experts instead of state officials or politicians; and there is only limited evidence of a discursive frame of a citizen-oriented norm of how to protect data-related privacy
Relationships between Law Enforcement Authorities and Drone Journalists in Spain
Get PDFThe article analyzes the relationship between law enforcement authorities and drone journalists, professionals who use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for newsgathering purposes, in Spain. The study has two specific objectives. First, to identify the criteria that law enforcement authorities have set for the public dissemination in traditional and social media of the drone footage they have obtained as part of their police operations, and to characterize the relationship that exists between law enforcement authorities and drone journalists. The study is guided by three hypotheses: Spanish law enforcement authorities have more capacity than journalists to shoot aerial news footage (H1); for Spanish law enforcement authorities, the informational use that can be made of the drone footage they obtain is of secondary importance (H2); and drone journalists feel their work is heavily restricted by law enforcement authorities (H3). These hypotheses are tested with the use of in-depth interviews with representatives of three law enforcement organizations in Spain and five drone pilots who have collaborated with news media outlets. The study concludes that the current regulatory framework for UAVs in Spain is very restrictive, in comparison to other countries, which prevents the development of drone journalism
Spreading (Dis)Trust: Covid-19 Misinformation and Government Intervention in Italy
Get PDFThe commentary focuses on the spread of Covid-19 misinformation in Italy, highlighting the dynamics that have impacted on its pandemic communication. Italy has recently been affected by a progressive erosion of trust in public institutions and a general state of information crisis regarding matters of health and science. In this context, the politicization of health issues and a growing use of social media to confront the Coronavirus “infodemic” have led the Italian Ministry of Health to play a strategic role in using its official Facebook page to mitigate the spread of misinformation and to offer updates to online publics. Despite this prompt intervention, which increased the visibility and reliability of public health communication, coordinated efforts involving different institutions, media and digital platform companies still seem necessary to reduce the impact of misinformation, as using a multichannel strategy helps avoid increasing social and technological disparities at a time of crisis
Digital Mis/Disinformation and Public Engagement with Health and Science Controversies: Fresh Perspectives from Covid-19
Get PDFDigital media, while opening a vast array of avenues for lay people to effectively engage with news, information and debates about important science and health issues, have become a fertile land for various stakeholders to spread misinformation and disinformation, stimulate uncivil discussions and engender ill-informed, dangerous public decisions. Recent developments of the Covid-19 infodemic might just be the tipping point of a process that has been long simmering in controversial areas of health and science (e.g., climate-change denial, anti-vaccination, anti-5G, Flat Earth doctrines). We bring together a wide range of fresh data and perspectives from four continents to help media scholars, journalists, science communicators, scientists, health professionals and policy-makers to better undersand these developments and what can be done to mitigate their impacts on public engagement with health and science controversies