Freedom of the Press 2014

Global press freedom fell to its lowest level in over a decade in 2013, as hopes raised by the Arab Spring were further dashed by major regression in Egypt, Libya, and Jordan, and marked setbacks also occurred in Turkey, Ukraine, and a number of countries in East Africa. In another key development, media freedom in the United States deteriorated due primarily to attempts by the government to inhibit reporting on national security issues.Meanwhile, as a result of declines in democratic settings over the past several years, the share of the world's population that enjoys a Free press remained at 14 percent, meaning only one in seven people live in countries where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal, and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures.These are the most significant findings of this report, the latest edition of an annual report published by Freedom House since 1980. While there were positive developments in a number of countries, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, the dominant trends were reflected in setbacks in a range of settings.The year's declines were driven by the desire of governments -- particularly in authoritarian states or polarized political environments -- to control news content, whether through the physical harassment of journalists covering protest movements or other sensitive news stories; restrictions on foreign reporters; or tightened constraints on online news outlets and social media. In addition, press freedom in a number of countries was threatened by private owners -- especially those with close connections to governments or ruling parties -- who altered editorial lines or dismissed key staff after acquiring previously independent outlets.These factors were behind the majority of the status downgrades for 2013, including the shifts from Partly Free to Not Free in Libya, South Sudan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Zambia. Significant declines also occurred in the Central African Republic, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Kenya, Montenegro, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda.Separately, influential authoritarian powers such as China and Russia continued to maintain a tight grip on locally based print and broadcast media, while also attempting to control the more independent views provided either in the blogosphere or by foreign news sources. Both countries introduced additional legal measures to penalize online speech in 2013. And while China focused on suppressing dissent on popular microblogging services and obstructing the foreign press, the Russian government closed RIA Novosti, a long-established news service, replacing it with an organization more openly under direct Kremlin control. Conditions in Eurasia remain bleak, with 97 percent of the region's population living in Not Free media environments.Even more open media environments are not immune to pressure on press freedom. The year featured the most significant decline of the past decade in one of the world's largest democracies, the United States, due to government attempts to control official information flows, particularly concerning national security -- related issues; the legal harassment of journalists with regard to protection of sources; and revelations of surveillance that included both the bulk collection of communications data by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the targeted wiretapping of media outlets. Disclosures that surveillance was being conducted by a range of governments -- many of them democratic -- against ordinary citizens as well as key political figures intensified concerns on a global level about the ability of journalists and others who gather and disseminate news and information to protect sources and maintain their digital privacy

The Role of Foreign Direct Investment on Press Freedom

In our paper we establish foreign direct investment (FDI) as a major determinant of media freedom. Global integration can strengthen the media sector financially, make it technologically enhanced and can also improve the economic environment as a whole. This, in turn, would work towards the enhancement of media freedom. The sample includes high, middle and low income economies. Using a panel of 115 countries over a period of 20 years, our results reveal that FDI is an absolute necessity for a free and efficient media. The results are robust to various alternate specifications and inclusion of additional control variables.Foreign Direct Investment; Press Freedom; Institutions

Revolutions and Expatriates: Social Networking, Ubiquitous Media and the Disintermediation of the State

This article explores the modern disruption of the state as the territorial control over its citizens and the restructuring of these social structures caused by social media and the unmediated communication of the digital age. Nowhere has this transformation been greater than in the Middle East, a region shaped by arbitrary political expediency and under tremendous popular pressure to redefine itself. But these transformations are not merely the populist uprisings of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria; they can be seen in economic transformations of Asia and economic harmonizations between Europe and North America. In all political, economic and social spheres, the role of social media and non-mediated communication has systematically reduced the role of the state and empowered a new network dynamic that will define the coming decades of the Twenty-First Century. A survey of Diaspora literature, however, suggests that while social media and Internet-age communications tools expand the role of Diaspora communities, they are quintessentially a tool. Some expatriate communities are engaged in peace building efforts and economic development while others are less tractable and using these tools to fund or promote armed conflict. These communities themselves are heterogeneous, so any generalization oversimplifies the community and its internal conflicts. The relative power of the state and the expatriate community are shifting away from the state – sometime evoking additional conflicts. Whatever the role, the significance of the Diaspora will increase and play a more significant part on their former homeland. The role will be determined by the conditions and the community

A Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of the 2008 American Presidential Election

Agenda-setting theory, based on the idea that journalism has a strong correlation to audience opinion and evaluation of issue salience, shows the unportance of how the media present the news. Naturally, media values vary across cultures, wherein some news outlets serve only to inform and others approach news through partisan positions or evaluative tactics. Especially during a time of media upset in the United States, it is important to examine U.S. media values and those of other cultures. This thesis looks at some of the dominant and documented differences in newspaper reporting in France and the United States, using Patterson’s governing and game schema as a basis. In accordance with previous research, French journalism was found to be more evaluative and American journalism to employ a game schema more often, although the results are mainly inconclusive due to the small sample size and large margins of error

The Role of Foreign Direct Investment on Press Freedom

In our paper we establish foreign direct investment (FDI) as a major determinant of media freedom. Global integration can strengthen the media sector financially, make it technologically enhanced and can also improve the economic environment as a whole. This, in turn, would work towards the enhancement of media freedom. The sample includes high, middle and low income economies. Using a panel of 115 countries over a period of 20 years, our results reveal that FDI is an absolute necessity for a free and efficient media. The results are robust to various alternate specifications and inclusion of additional control variables

The Role of Foreign Direct Investment on Press Freedom

In our paper we establish foreign direct investment (FDI) as a major determinant of media freedom. Global integration can strengthen the media sector financially, make it technologically enhanced and can also improve the economic environment as a whole. This, in turn, would work towards the enhancement of media freedom. The sample includes high, middle and low income economies. Using a panel of 115 countries over a period of 20 years, our results reveal that FDI is an absolute necessity for a free and efficient media. The results are robust to various alternate specifications and inclusion of additional control variables

Examining the link between press freedom and politics.

Freedom of the press is a hallmark of liberal democracy. Denying this civil liberty emboldens a government to exert an undue degree of influence over its citizens. By comparing the media discourse in a democratic country to the media discourse in an authoritarian country, one could reasonably expect to identify unique language markers, which shed light on their divergent political climates. This study specifically sourced articles from the Venezuelan publication El Universal and the Costa Rican publication The Tico Times. The author then analyzed every article related to politics published by both newspapers in March 2014 and in March 2017 using the software program NVivo. The author noted a distinct shift from overt anti-government discourse in some of El Universal’s 2014 articles to more uniformly measured, matter-of-fact reporting in its 2017 articles. The Tico Times maintained more consistency over time, but its political coverage decreased dramatically from 2014 to 2017

The 2014 Egyptian constitution: balancing leadership with civil rights (al - madaniyya)

In 2013, in the aftermath of the military coup d'état, many ‘Islamized’ articles have been banned from the 2012 Egyptian constitution and almost one hundred firmly inclined towards the respect of human rights and the absolutim on freedom of belief have been added. This latter issue did cause pragmatisms on the freedom of worship and on the nature of the new leadership, which remains intrinsically unstated in the 2014 text. Essential questions concerning the conceptualization of citizenship and its extension (al-wataniyya,) as well as the pluralism of the concept of ‘madaniyya’ (as right to the city) still remain unanswered. Based on the critical discourse analysis and in person observations dating back to 2012, this article will attempt to address and understand to what extent by changing the meaning of wataniyya the future of Egypt can change accordingly

Global Copyright, Local Speech

Copyright is no longer a matter of promoting the progress of science in the words of the U.S. Constitution. It is now more than ever before a matter of trade. Furthermore, under the WTO\u27s TRIPS Agreement, we now have a global copyright (G©) regime. The globalization of copyright law destabilized previous balances. The shift to a trade environment requires us to reevaluate the previous balance. The concern explored in this article is that the old foundations will collapse under the heavy weight of global forces. The concern is that local culture, access to information, research and free speech in general, will be left unattended, in the face of expanding copyright. Accordingly, this article examines the intersection of copyright law and free speech on the global level. A normative evaluation of G© law is conducted: it was detached from its previously underlying philosophies and is now void of a coherent theory, other than that of a trade ideology. The framework of G© is then applied to examine the conflict between copyright law and freedom of speech: while copyright has become global, free speech jurisprudence remained local. The result is that the answers given to the alleged copyright/speech conflict in some developed countries that copyright is the engine of free speech, do not necessarily fit other places. The copyright/speech conflict is a legal and political site where global norms of trade collide with local culture, resulting in a GloCalization. When copyright law is imposed over countries without a strong tradition of free speech, the trade benefits to the North have a cost of limiting access to information, use thereof, and the formation of new speech, or more generally, it has a cost in freedom, in the South