In the land of becoming: the gendered experience of communication doctoral students

This article investigates two aspects of the experience of communications graduate students. It examines their relations with their departments and the academic staff most close to their work (supervisors and mentors), and the existence and impact of other factors, such as age and dependants, on the duration of their studies. Despite the differences of the educational systems and socio-economic factors between countries, the findings show that the experience of the communications doctoral student is gender specific. To that a number of factors may play an important role such as academic environment and personal/private life commitments

A Global Hypothesis for Women in Journalism and Mass Communications: The Ratio of Recurrent and Reinforced Residuum

This paper examines the status of women in communications industries and on university faculties. It specifically tests the Ratio of Recurrent and Reinforced Residuum or R3 hypothesis, as developed by Rush in the early 1980s [Rush, Buck & Ogan,1982]. The R3 hypothesis predicts that the percentage of women in the communications industries and on university faculties will follow the ratio residing around 1/4:3/4 or 1/3:2/3 proportion females to males. This paper presents data from a nationwide U.S. survey and compares them to data from global surveys and United Nations reports. The evidence is overwhelming and shows the relevance and validity of the R3 hypothesis across different socio-economic and cultural contexts. The paper argues that the ratio is the outcome of systemic discrimination that operates at multiple levels. The obstacles to achieving equality in the academy as well as media industries are discussed and suggestions for breaking out of the R3 ratio are included.

A Global Hypothesis for Women in Journalism and Mass Communications: The Ratio of Recurrent and Reinforced Residuum

This paper examines the status of women in communications industries and on university faculties. It specifically tests the Ratio of Recurrent and Reinforced Residuum or R3 hypothesis, as developed by Rush in the early 1980s [Rush, Buck & Ogan,1982]. The R3 hypothesis predicts that the percentage of women in the communications industries and on university faculties will follow the ratio residing around 1/4:3/4 or 1/3:2/3 proportion females to males. This paper presents data from a nationwide U.S. survey and compares them to data from global surveys and United Nations reports. The evidence is overwhelming and shows the relevance and validity of the R3 hypothesis across different socio-economic and cultural contexts. The paper argues that the ratio is the outcome of systemic discrimination that operates at multiple levels. The obstacles to achieving equality in the academy as well as media industries are discussed and suggestions for breaking out of the R3 ratio are included.

Defining authorship in user-generated content : copyright struggles in The Game of Thrones

The notion of authorship is a core element in antipiracy campaigns accompanying an emerging copyright regime, worldwide. These campaigns are built on discourses that aim to ‘problematize’ the issues of ‘legality’ of content downloading practices, ‘protection’ for content creators and the alleged damage caused to creators’ livelihood by piracy. Under these tensions, fandom both subverts such discourses, through sharing and production practices, and legitimizes industry’s mythology of an ‘original’ author. However, how is the notion of authorship constructed in the cooperative spaces of fandom? The article explores the most popular fandom sites of A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series that inspires the TV-show Game of Thrones and argues that the notion of authorship is not one-dimensional, but rather consists of attributes that develop across three processes: community building, the creative and the industrial/production process. Here, fandom constructs a figure of the ‘author’ which, although more complex than the one presented by the industry in its copyright/anti-piracy campaigns, maintains the status quo of regulatory frameworks based on the idea of a ‘primary’ creator

Ideology and policy: Notes on the shaping of the Internet

This paper considers some of the ideologies that are shaping Internet policies. It addresses the priorities of international policy initiatives and identifies their discursive constructions. It takes stock of some of the most characteristic policy directions that seek to define the Internet and its uses within an agenda of predominant privatisation

Sharing, Labour and Governance on Social Media: A Rights Lacuna

This paper discusses the dimensions and dynamics that configure the ways in which 'sharing' takes place in social media environments. It pays attention to the policy and political economic environments in constituting sharing as a certain act and 'moment' within the continuum of production-consumption and addresses sharing as a form of labour. The discussion argues that the conditions shaping the act and ideology of sharing, allow certain 'sharing practices while demonising others'. This is facilitated by both organisational and state policies, as well as a gap of comprehensive user-centred regulation

Social Media Users’ Legal Consciousness About Privacy

This article explores the ways in which the concept of privacy is understood in the context of social media and with regard to users’ awareness of privacy policies and laws in the ‘Post-Snowden’ era. In the light of presumably increased public exposure to privacy debates, generated partly due to the European “Right to be Forgotten” ruling and the Snowden revelations on mass surveillance, this article explores users’ meaning-making of privacy as a matter of legal dimension in terms of its violations and threats online and users’ ways of negotiating their Internet use, in particular social networking sites. Drawing on the concept of legal consciousness, this article explores through focus group interviews the ways in which social media users negotiate privacy violations and what role their understanding of privacy laws (or lack thereof) might play in their strategies of negotiation. The findings are threefold: first, privacy is understood almost universally as a matter of controlling one’s own data, including information disclosure even to friends, and is strongly connected to issues about personal autonomy; second, a form of resignation with respect to control over personal data appears to coexist with a recognized need to protect one’s private data, while respondents describe conscious attempts to circumvent systems of monitoring or violation of privacy, and third, despite widespread coverage of privacy legal issues in the press, respondents’ concerns about and engagement in “self-protecting” tactics derive largely from being personally affected by violations of law and privacy

Reluctant activists? The impact of legislative and structural attempts of surveillance on investigative journalism

If we accept that surveillance by the State and ‘sousveillance’ by the media in Western democracies tend towards a relative equilibrium, or ‘equiveillance’ supported by the function of journalism as a watchdog and that the rule of law largely protects fundamental freedoms, this paper argues that the act of ‘mutual watching’ is undesired by the State and comes at a very high cost to journalists. The combination of technological capacity, legislative change and antidemocratic sentiments of the State, in the context of its willingness and ability to collect and process Big Data on an unprecedented scale, disrupt the preconditions for a strong democracy based on free media and free citizens. This paper examines the politics of investigative journalism under the conditions of dominance of the State by investigating the experiences of journalists with surveillance. Our interviews with 48 journalists show that journalists are acutely aware of surveillance and its noxious impact. Well beyond simple ‘watching’ these experiences are remarkably similar in non-Western and Western countries. Journalists are engaging increasingly with technological and other communities, as they aim to defend journalism and their lives. Their activism is operationalised in three areas: (a) in reluctant often-fraught cooperation with hacktivists, (b) in self-directed protection of communications and sources and (c) in not always willingly acting as dissenters vis-a-vis the State. This paper explores the extent to which journalists consider equilibrium to be distorted, and how they are countering any slide into subdued democracy