UN reform and NATO transformation: the missing link. Egmont Paper, no. 10, November 2005

From NATO’s perspective, Kofi Annan’s report In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All at first sight seemed hardly relevant.(1) In dealing with regional organizations, it nowhere explicitly mentioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This was all the more surprising because Annan thus bypassed NATO’s active involvement in the implementation of a number of post-conflict peace-building settlements, based on UN Security Council resolutions, in areas such as Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the weeks after the publication of Annan’s report, NATO’s Secretary- General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on several occasions expressed his support for his UN counterpart’s reform package. In a keynote address in Brussels, among others, he argued that ‘NATO will increasingly act in concert with other institutions’, including the UN, pointing at NATO’s cooperation on the ground in the Balkans and Afghanistan

Desperately constructing ethnic audiences: Anti-immigration discourses and minority audience research in the Netherlands

This article examines how minority ethnic audiences are measured, and thus constructed, in the Netherlands today. The analysis shows that this process is tightly woven into the dominant assimilationist and neoliberal discourse. This discourse portrays specific minority groups as deviant in relation to an essentialized notion of Dutchness. Furthermore, it presents social inclusion as an opportunity that is limited to well-adjusted, profitable consumers. Different attempts to represent minority audiences – including efforts to promote a more just minority representation in Dutch media – are compelled to accommodate to this dominant discourse. The article underscores the limited scope for contesting current hegemonic representations of minority groups and national belonging in the Netherlands

Survival or Sustainability? Contributions of Innovatively-Managed News Ventures to the Future of Egyptian Journalism

In the repressive political climate prevailing in Egypt in 2013-15, news ventures aspiring to high standards of reporting were forced to innovate. This paper analyses three Egyptian start-ups that experimented with novel revenue streams and news services during that period, to gain insights into their approaches to managing journalism. In the process it compares different criteria for assessing sustainability and concludes that, in adverse political environments, narrow economic measures of profitability and survival may give a misleading picture as to the sustainability of the kind of journalism conducive to democratic practice. Operating collaboratively, transparently and ethically may slow productivity and profitability in the short term while laying stronger foundations for durable relations among media teams, as well as with readers and advertisers, in the long run

Decision-making by the security council : the situation between Iraq and Kuwait, 1990-2002 ; a survey of resolutions

Dick A. Leurdijk; Stella I.M.L. Beernin

Intended and unintended effects of policy measures aimed at promoting net neutrality: an examination of the value chain for video distribution

Net neutrality has, for a number of years, been a topic of often heated discussion in the Internet and telecom community. Net neutrality, in essence, requires that Internet users have open access to content and applications on the Internet, and, vice versa, that providers of applications can reach their intended end users over the Internet. Video distribution clearly is an area where the Internet opens up opportunities for many new applications for consumers and businesses. At the same time, video distribution is also an area where new applications meet an existing ecosystem with existing business models. Our analysis shows that net neutrality interacts with video distribution at different points along the value chain. We therefore call for a value chain approach, as assets in each part in the chain can develop into a control point for the open access to content and applications. Moreover, a measure aimed at one part of the chain can have an effect in other parts as well. Policy measures that are in force now, or that are expected in 2012, focus at the public Internet lane part of the distribution chain and impose obligations on network providers, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in particular: transparency, no blocking/throttling, no ISP tariffing of Over the Top applications. Although each of these measures contribute to a certain extent to their intended effects, our analysis shows that they are likely to lead to more debates in other areas, as players try to compensate the loss of influence or revenue streams by rearranging the ways in which they exploit their assets. Incidents and debates have already occurred or can be expected in the areas of peering and interconnection, distribution of resources between public lane and managed lane and in particular the influencing of people’s navigation on the Internet through search, recommendations and app stores linked to devices

User generated diversity: some reflections on how to improve the quality of amateur productions

The potential of user created content to make a meaningful contribution to media diversity is subject to debates. Central to these debates is the argument of the quality of amateur productions. This article will take a close look at this argument, and make some suggestions on how to improve the quality and utility of amateur productions with regard to the democratic functions of media