Book review : Communication and Social Change. A Citizen Perspective

Book review: Thomas Tufte: Communication and Social Change. A Citizen Perspective. Polity Press: Cambridge, Malden, 2017; vi + ix +202 pp.: € 21,20. ISBN: 9780745670386.Book reviewNon peer reviewe

Twinning social memory and social imaginary : challenges for east African media policies

The article discusses the significance of the past in the planning of media policies in two neighbouring countries in Africa, namely Kenya and Tanzania. The theoretical frame is composed of four concepts: social imaginary, collective memory, domestication, and liminality. The scrutiny starts from the last years of colonialism and ends with the presentday situation with online media. In both countries, the basic media approach is still distinctly top-down and focuses on authorities—either the state or market elites. Kenya appears as a representative of continuity, while the media history of Tanzania is filled with jerky turns. However, the Tanzanian mediascape comes closer to the ordinary person, thanks to the use of Kiswahili and colloquial vocabulary, while the press in Kenya remains very elite oriented. The far more advanced Kenyan information and communications technology (ICT) situation does not change the situation much, because at the citizen level, the emphasis in ICT development is on services, not citizens’ voices. The shadow of the state is strong.Peer reviewe

A glance at GMMP news criteria and its research tradition

In this report, a longitudinal study is conducted to elaborate upon Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) numbers and eventual changes in news criteria over the past 25 years. Furthermore, the results are brought under the frame of international news flow research, which started in the 1950s.Today, the one-day GMMP is the only ‘classic’ international news flow study left, mainly due to the enormous growth of mediated information transmitted daily; it is impossible to collect enough resources for a one-week empirical study, of which was entirely possible decades ago. The credibility of such a lack of large empirical material, as in GMMP, can be naturally questioned. However, none of the previous news flow studies covered the world as extensively as GMMP has done. Therefore, it is justified to talk about a global approach, wherein more than 110 countries are represented in a study. GMMP definitely provides a glance at the news material that is transmitted daily in the world’s media. In this report, gender is given less emphasis than in other GMMP studies. Instead, this report will focus on news flows and their eventual changes, but, naturally, the gender dimension is prioritised