The study of Asian practices can teach us a lot on media and their role in the global decline of democracy. Indonesia and the Philippines show that digitalisation has not only failed to fight against the capture of mainstream media by oligarchs but also to boost the fourth estate.
Myanmar’s internationally acclaimed regime reform has subtly impacted the media environment. Civil society was involved in the process of developing a new legal framework for the press but its liberalizing effects have been mitigated by the shift from ex ante to ex post censorship and the consequences of privatization.
Jacquerie, revolt of the peripheries, or revenge of the working class? The initial analysis of the “yellow vest” (gilets jaunes) movement has unleashed sociological prejudices. Yet this movement reflects not so much a France split in two as a multiplicity of territorial interdependencies.
An in-depth study of the recent history of the right to know in the United States traces the origins of the rise of transparency back to practical, anti-bureaucratic demands rather than to any ideological claims made by the generation of 1968.
Scenes of lynching, beheadings, corpses… Although easily accessible on the Internet, images of violence are often occulted in the French media. Why are some images shown while others are kept out of circulation? Are some forms of violence unfit to be seen?
In the run-up to Ukraine’s presidential election, political scientist Tatiana Zhurzhenko reflects on the conditions for political representation in a situation of civil conflict. The present state of public opinion is difficult to assess, both inside and outside the country, while an ongoing information war fuels fears and rumours in the regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
The penetration of mobile phones in Chinese daily life has made collective actions easier to organize and challenged government censorship. Highlighting this new form of communication, the following essay shows how the traditional mass media’s role as gatekeeper is waning.
How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers? Gloria Origgi claims that Internet is a giant network of ranking and rating systems in which information is valued as long as it has been already filtered by other people. The Information Age is being replaced by a Reputation Age.
