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Ed Webb

Summer Internship Opportunities - 6 views

House Divided Interns. Professors Pinsker and Osborne are seeking paid summer interns for the House Divided Project (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu). The project concerns Dickinson College and...

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started by Ed Webb on 19 Mar 09 no follow-up yet
Ed Webb

Satellite Photos - Japan Before and After Tsunami - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Note the power of visual presentation here. Stunning.
Ed Webb

Ian Bogost - Beyond Blogs - 0 views

  • I wish these were the sorts of questions so-called digital humanists considered, rather than figuring out how to pay homage to the latest received web app or to build new tools to do the same old work. But as I recently argued, a real digital humanism isn't one that's digital, but one that's concerned with the present and the future. A part of that concern involves considering the way we want to interact with one another and the world as scholars, and to intervene in that process by making it happen. Such a question is far more interesting and productive than debating the relative merits of blogs or online journals, acts that amount to celebrations of how little has really changed.
  • Perhaps a blog isn't a great tool for (philosophical; videogame) discussion or even for knowledge retention, etc... but a whole *blogosphere*...? If individuals (and individual memory in particular) are included within the scope of "the blogosphere" then surely someone remembers the "important" posts, like you seemed to be asking for...?
Ed Webb

A Song Contest Becomes a Hot Spot in Feud Between Countries - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The simmering conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has entered a new theater: the Eurovision Song Contest.
  • some Azerbaijanis who took impartiality to impressive lengths, voting for the Armenian entry in the 2009 final in May, reportedly were called in to the Azerbaijani National Security Ministry
  • Previously, the Armenians had raised tensions by slipping images of a memorial in Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave at the center of the dispute between the countries, into the video presentation that introduced their representative in a preliminary round.
Ed Webb

Memo From Cairo - Hints of Pluralism in Egyptian Religious Debates - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Mr. Banna was pleased because at least his ideas were being circulated. Mr. Banna, who is 88 years old and is the brother of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been preaching liberal Islamic views for decades. But only now, he said, does he have the chance to be heard widely. It is not that a majority agrees with him; it is not that the tide is shifting to a more moderate interpretative view of religion; it is just that the rise of relatively independent media — like privately owned newspapers, satellite television channels and the Internet — has given him access to a broader audience.
  • Some of those who have begun to speak up say they are acting in spite of — and not with the encouragement of — the Egyptian government. Political analysts said that the government still tried to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated Islamic movement, to present itself as the guardian of conservative Muslim values.
  • President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world has quieted the accusation that the United States is at war with Islam, making it easier for liberal Muslims to promote more Western secular ideas, Egyptian political analysts said.
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  • the dynamic was for Christians as well as Muslims in Egypt
  • this time Mr. Qimni did not go into hiding. He appeared on the television show, sitting beside Sheik Badri as he defended himself.
  • “It is an unprecedented move to recognize that one can be Egyptian and not adhere to one of these three religions,”
Ed Webb

WebSlides Showcase: Diigo WebSlides: Converting blogs, rss feeds, bookmarks to slideshows - 0 views

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    May be of use for case studies
Ed Webb

Enough About You - Features - Utne Reader - 0 views

  • Economic man . . . has given way to the psychological man of our times—the final product of bourgeois individualism. The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of 19th-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire.
  • The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security.
  • Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it. People nowadays complain of an inability to feel. They cultivate more vivid experiences, seek to beat sluggish flesh to life, attempt to revive jaded appetites. Outwardly bland, submissive, and sociable, they seethe with an inner anger for which a dense, overpopulated bureaucratic society can devise few legitimate outlets.
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  • The mass media, with their cult of celebrity and their attempt to surround it with glamour and excitement, have made America a nation of fans and moviegoers. The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage common people to identify themselves with the stars and to hate the “herd,” and make it more and more difficult for them to accept the banality of everyday existence.
  • The modern propaganda of commodities and the good life has sanctioned impulse gratification and made it unnecessary for the id to apologize for its wishes or disguise their grandiose proportions. But this same propaganda has made failure and loss unsupportable.
  • The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history.
  • Our over-organized society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes modeled his state of nature.
  • The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith.
  • The modern prince does not much care that “there’s a job to be done”—the slogan of American capitalism at an earlier and more enterprising stage of its development; what interests him is that “relevant audiences,” in the language of the Pentagon Papers, have to be cajoled, won over, seduced.
  • At the same time that public life and even private life take on the qualities of spectacle, a countermovement seeks to model spectacle, theater, all forms of life, on reality—to obliterate the very distinction between art and life. Both developments popularize a sense of the absurd, that hallmark of the contemporary sensibility. Overexposure to manufactured illusions soon destroys their representational power. The illusion of reality dissolves, not in a heightened sense of reality as we might expect, but in a remarkable indifference to reality.
  • To the performing self, the only reality is the identity he can construct out of materials furnished by advertising and mass culture, themes of popular film and fiction, and fragments torn from a vast range of cultural traditions. In order to polish and perfect the part he has devised for himself, the new Narcissus gazes at his own reflection, not so much in admiration as in unremitting search of flaws, signs of fatigue, decay.
  • On the one hand, the degradation of work makes skill and competence increasingly irrelevant to material success and thus encourages the presentation of the self as a commodity; on the other hand, it discourages commitment to the job and drives people, as the only alternative to boredom and despair, to view work with self-critical detachment.
  • Excerpted from The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations, by Christopher Lasch. Copyright © 1979 by Christopher Lasch. Used by permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 
Ed Webb

Journalist Sanctioned After Interview With Terror Suspect's Father - Tunisia Live - 0 views

  • The Sunday episode of Liman Yajroo Fakat (“For He Who Dares”), hosted by journalist Samir Elwafi, has been accused of breaching journalistic ethics in its coverage of Kamel Gadhgadhi, who was killed during a standoff with security forces February 4. The Ettounsiya station has been blocked from airing it again by the High Independent Board of Audiovisual Communication (HAICA), a newly-formed independent body regulating broadcast media, according to a HAICA statement released Tuesday.
  • The breaches mainly focused on the “lack of respect for the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in particular Chapter 6 thereof, relating to the right to life” and the “lack of respect for pluralism of ideas and opinions,” according to the HAICA statement.
  • When addressing issues such as “violence incitement, white-washing, or calling for violence,” the journalist “should intervene to show that this violence or terrorism is rejected by Tunisian society, and that this presents a huge danger to the whole transition,”
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  • Tunisia’s main journalists’ union, the SNJT, did not defend Elwafi or Ettounisya. The union instead issued a statement agreeing with HAICA’s criticism of the coverage. “There is no neutrality with terrorism and terrorists, the enemies of Tunisia, and the enemies of freedom and democracy,” the union’s statement said, denouncing Elwafi’s “abuses.”
  • “There are no taboo subjects,” Lajmi said, “but there is a way to treat them.”
Ed Webb

Wary voters await elections in Iran - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

  • “The foreign media is trying to influence voters," said Ali, "The Persian-language channels are sending messages to people, calling on them not to vote for the revolutionary candidates.”
  • “People know well that the British are targeting the revolution. They want their candidates to win so they can have control over the country like before.”
  • “Those who are praised by the West can’t be trusted,”
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  • In a coffee shop near Bastani Square, Al-Monitor met with Bagher, another seminary student. The cafe showed no traces of being situated in Qom. Decorated with pictures of Salvador Dali, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, Al Pacino, Leonardo DiCaprio and others, it might have been anywhere in the world. However, two grand photos of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the two supreme leaders in the history of the Islamic Republic, brought one back to Iran.
  • Bagher is critical of foreign media. He said he believes international media outlets are trying to present Iran inaccurately. “There are three main models dominating the world today,” Bagher told Al-Monitor. “The Western model, the Daesh [Islamic State] model and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s model; you can’t mix any of these three.”
  • as Iran is about to hold key elections, it appears the country is still in the grip of a struggle for the soul of the revolution — and what it means
Ed Webb

In the internet age, radio still rules the world - Al Jazeera English - 1 views

  • radio remains the primary source of information for most people in the world. "Radio still remains the medium that reaches the widest audience worldwide, in the quickest possible time,"
  • an estimated 44,000 radio stations broadcast to at least five billion people, representing 70 percent of the population worldwide
  • a platform that allows people to interact, despite different educational levels, so somebody may be illiterate but still be able to call in a show to give a testimony and participate
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  • In developing countries, an estimated 75 percent of households have access to a radio, making it an essential and reliable part of disaster and emergency response, UNESCO said
  • In India, the biggest advantage of radio is that it is cheap, making it accessible to 99 percent of the population
  • The arrival of mobile phones has changed the consumption habits of millions, but many come with built-in radio chips and this has helped keep the radio industry effective, more than 120 years after the first radio broadcast
  • "It's very local, very community-driven, so people feel that they can really relate to presenters and the conversations on the radio," Amy O'Donnell, a spokesman for the aid organisation Oxfam, told Al Jazeera. "It's actually a very participatory mechanism in local communities for people to have their say and have their voices heard."
Ed Webb

This Intifada Will Be Digital - The Black Iris - 0 views

  • In these 15 years, we went from an era where mainstream media dominated the narrative, to an era where social media dominates it. This isn’t a time when the mainstream sees the online as a playful mechanism of democratized media (or an opportunity to present their brands as participatory), but a time when the mainstream is chasing down leads from what circulates online. And the region’s people now have the power to shape the narrative (whether we’ve fully realized it or not).
  • Internet user growth in the region has gone up by 6,091.9% between 2000 and 2015
  • Arabic is now the fourth biggest language on the Web after English, Chinese and Spanish
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  • as a Jordanian, I was part of what I personally believe to be the final generation that actually gave a damn what the government did or did not do. Our relationship with the state was like our relationship with a television – a one-way communication channel, where we are on the receiving end no matter how much we yell at the screen. And that was that
  • Like everyone else, I have no idea how this conflict will end. But I know that the Web will undeniably play a leading role – and that’s not something anyone could’ve imagined back in 1948. As yet another cycle of violence is upon us, that role is worth studying, and it’s that role that I find myself paying attention to the most.
Ed Webb

Egypt Update: New Media Regulations Enforced Within Days - 0 views

  • New Media Regulations Enforced Within Days: On March 21, the Supreme Media Regulatory Council issued its first penalty for violating the new bylaws regulating the media that were introduced last week against Al-Mashhad newspaper. According to Al-Mashhad’s Editor in Chief Magdy Shendy, the newspaper was fined 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,890) and will be blocked by Egyptian internet providers for six months for “violations of ‘public morals,’ ‘ethics,’ and ‘written traditions’” for a “pornographic picture” and “offensive comments” related to coverage of a female TV presenter. Shendy argues, however, that “the only reason for the decision is our [Al-Mashhad’s] stance on the constitutional amendments,” which would allow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to stay in power until at least 2034. According to Mada Masr, Al-Mashhad published [Ar] a report documenting police officers bribing Egyptians with Ramadan meals in exchange for votes in the expected referendum on the amendments. The new media regulations enable the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block and fine websites and social media accounts it believes has published “offending material” including “anything inciting violating the law, public morals, racism, intolerance, violence, discrimination between citizens or hatred.”
Ed Webb

Jewish Horror, Monotheism, and the Origins of Evil - Tablet Magazine - 0 views

  • the new horror film The Golem, from directors Doron and Yoav Paz
  • The directors of The Golem, who are Israeli brothers
  • Reasons for the dearth of Jewish horror fiction are varied, ranging from producers possibly fearing that the ethnic particularism of these themes wouldn’t draw in as wide an audience, to the (incorrect) sense that Judaism doesn’t offer the same baroque supernatural possibilities that Christianity does.
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  • The theme of the golem, after all, has been explored several times before, from the silent film era of Paul Wegener’s expressionist Der Golem (1916) until today, including in The X-Files and The Simpsons’ annual “Tree House of Horror” Halloween episodes. There have also been a small number of horror films that explore Jewish folklore, such as Ole Bornedal’s The Possession (2012), which in lieu of The Exorcist’s Pazuzu features the malicious spirit of legend known as a dybbuk, an entity which also appears in David Goyer’s The Unborn (2009), and even in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man (2009). Yet despite a preponderance of Jewish horror directors from Curt Siodmak, creator of The Wolf Man (1941) to Polanski, Hollywood has tended not to explore explicitly Jewish themes in horror.
  • the sense of the terrors of the real world is fundamental to monotheistic horror, for it asks what the ultimate origin of evil is.
  • The Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov in The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre distinguished between what he called the “uncanny,” whereby the supernaturalism of a story can be ultimately explained by rational recourse, and the “marvelous” in what’s been depicted is to be understood as genuinely supernatural. For Todorov, that which is fantastic in literature exists in the ambiguity between the uncanny and the marvelous, where the characters in a story (and the reader) are unsure as to whether events witnessed are genuinely supernatural or not. Todorov writes: “The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.”
  • what I’ve termed “monotheistic horror” in contrast to “dualistic horror.” The latter is any work which posits supernatural evil as somehow separate in agency from God, while the former steadfastly holds to all things—even evil things—as having their origin in the Lord. I’d argue that Jewish horror fiction, for all of its diversity, must be resolutely defined by an overpowering sense of monotheism, and that it is that sense of the fundamental unity of reality that makes those works terrifying. Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls can exist in both types of horror, but in dualistic horror God is either configured as explicitly separate from those evil things, or mention of Him is passed over.
  • The Paz brothers’ film is an example of Jewish horror not because it takes place in a 17th-century shtetl, or because its story deals with that most Jewish of monsters, but rather because there is no sense that anything that happens doesn’t occur due to the power and sovereignty of God.
  • in The Golem the creature is fashioned in adherence to God’s reality. Hanna’s creation is not demonic, but rather divine—if still capable of malevolence.
  • Any fiction that presents the malevolence experienced in reality as integral to the unity of that very same reality is monotheistic horror. In this way, I’d argue that Franz Kafka is one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th century, with a dark perspective that rivals that of H.P. Lovecraft. The latter thought the world meaningless, but Kafka never fell into that error. The result is paradoxically a horror all the more disturbing for what it implies about evil’s derivation.
  • For Kafka the deep wisdom of reality is even darker than Lovecraft’s nihilism, for his horror is based on the type of irony that can only be born from the most radical of monotheisms. The author could tell his friend Max Brod that here is “Plenty of hope—for God—no end of hope—only not for us,” a succinct summation of the major themes of Jewish horror, where what is fully externalized is a theodicy that recognizes evil exists in the world while also acknowledging that God must be its author.
  • The ur-text of Jewish horror, and what I would argue is perhaps the most terrifying story every told, is the biblical Book of Job. Few narratives can match Job in the sheer awful implications of what’s been recounted, of the upstanding man of Uz who “was perfect and upright, and one that feared God,” but who nevertheless was struck down by the Lord with a deluge of afflictions. So many details of Job’s story, often associated with the fatalism of Greek tragedy to which it bears some similarity, have a gothic sensibility. There is Satan who talks of “roving about in the earth and … walking about in it,” and of Job cursing himself by asking, “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?” Then there is the pyrotechnic impressiveness of God himself, who “answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”
  • Monotheistic horror should not be interpreted as the logical culmination of monotheism itself, rather it should be seen as the dark undercurrent, the nagging anxiety, of what it means if there is only one Lord but we’re uncertain as to if He is always benevolent, for as Miles observes “all of God’s actions could actually have been the devil’s.” There is the upsetting ambiguity of monotheistic horror—not that God’s actions are the devil’s, but that they could be.
  • one of the most potent lessons of Jewish horror fiction: that there is a permeable membrane between civilization and anarchy, where those who claim to protect us one day can cast us aside the next. The “friends” of Job are among the most callous of monsters in the book. What makes Jewish horror so frightening is its entirely accurate understanding that all evil ultimately must have its origin not in devils, but in the two most frightening things in our sublime universe: God and his creations.
Ed Webb

U.S. Cancels Journalist's Award Over Her Criticism of Trump - Foreign Policy - 0 views

  • a Finnish investigative journalist, has faced down death threats and harassment over her work exposing Russia’s propaganda machine long before the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. In January, the U.S. State Department took notice, telling Aro she would be honored with the prestigious International Women of Courage Award, to be presented in Washington by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Weeks later, the State Department rescinded the award offer. A State Department spokesperson said it was due to a “regrettable error,” but Aro and U.S. officials familiar with the internal deliberations tell a different story. They say the department revoked her award after U.S. officials went through Aro’s social media posts and found she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump.
  • There is no indication that the decision to revoke the award came from the secretary of state or the White House. Officials who spoke to FP have suggested the decision came from lower-level State Department officials wary of the optics of Pompeo granting an award to an outspoken critic of the Trump administration.
  • the incident underscores how skittish some officials—career and political alike—have become over government dealings with vocal critics of a notoriously thin-skinned president.
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  • lower-level officials self-censor dealings with critics of the administration abroad
  • “The reality in which political decisions or presidential pettiness directs top U.S. diplomats’ choices over whose human rights work is mentioned in the public sphere and whose is not is a really scary reality.”
  • She often debunks misinformation spread online and comments on major news events related to propaganda and election interference, including Brexit and the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into links between the Russian government and Trump’s campaign. She has regularly tweeted criticism about Trump’s sharp political rhetoric and attacks on the press
  • After first being notified she would get the award, Aro filled out forms and questionnaires at the request of officials and cancelled paid speaking engagements to travel to Washington to attend the March 7 ceremony in Washington. The State Department also sent her an official invitation to accept the award and planned an itinerary for a corresponding tour of the United States, complete with flights and high-profile visits to newspapers and universities across the country.
  • In 2014, Aro pursued reporting on a Russian troll factory in St. Petersburg that aimed to alter western public opinions. Long before the U.S. elections in 2016, which propelled Russian disinformation campaigns to the spotlight, she unearthed evidence of a state-sanctioned propaganda machine trying to shape online discourse and spread disinformation. After she published her investigation, Russian nationalist websites and pro-Moscow outlets in Finland coordinated smear campaigns against her, accusing her at times of being a Western intelligence agent and drug dealer, and bombarding her with anonymous abusive messages. She also received death threats.
  • reserved the right to seek damages, due to Aro having to cancel paid speaking events
Ed Webb

Egypt TV host Mohamed al-Ghiety jailed for interviewing gay man - BBC News - 0 views

  • An Egyptian TV presenter has been sentenced to one year of hard labour for interviewing a gay man last year.A court in Giza also fined Mohamed al-Ghiety 3,000 Egyptian pounds ($167; £130) for "promoting homosexuality" on his privately owned LTC TV channel.
  • Homosexuality is not explicitly criminalised in Egypt, however, the authorities have been increasingly cracking down on the LGBT community.
  • lawyer Samir Sabry, who is well known in Egypt for taking celebrities to court, filed a lawsuit against Ghiety for his interview which took place in August 2018
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  • Egypt's top media body, the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, immediately took the channel off air for two weeks, citing "professional violations".
  • In addition to the jail term and fine, the misdemeanours court also ordered Ghiety to be put under surveillance for one year after serving his sentence
  • Egypt's media council banned homosexuals from appearing on any media outlet after a rainbow flag was raised at a concert in Cairo in 2017, in a rare public show of support for the LGBT community in the conservative, mainly Muslim country.
  • The authorities rely on a 1961 prostitution law that criminalises "habitual debauchery" to charge people who they suspect of engaging in consensual homosexual conduct.
  • Mr Sabry was also the lawyer who filed a case against Egyptian actress Rania Youssef on charges of "inciting debauchery" over a see-through outfit she wore at an awards ceremony last year. He later dropped the case after Ms Youssef apologised.
Ed Webb

An industry under threat: Ramadan 2019, brought to you by Egyptian Media Group | MadaMasr - 0 views

  • This time of year, the offices of TV production companies are usually bustling with stars conducting meetings in preparation for the upcoming Ramadan television season (which falls in May this year)
  • The local television scene is rife with talk about the implications of recent developments in the field, which entail an effective halt in almost all TV drama production
  • What we’re witnessing this year is not a marketing crisis, or a weakness in screenplays, or any of the other issues that have ailed the drama industry in the past; rather, the very existence of the industry is under unprecedented threat. The number of series being produced has plummeted, and is expected to amount to 18 series at most, the majority of which are  to be produced by Synergy, the production house owned by Tamer Morsy, head of the intelligence-affiliated Egyptian Media Group (EMG). It is the newest step in the state’s ongoing bid to monopolize all forms of media and artistic production in Egypt.
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  • one must go back to the outset of the crisis, nearly three years ago. Back then, there were over 30 series released every season, produced under a diverse range of production houses and addressing a wide array of subjects. The industry cycle was more or less stable, starting with producers in competition with each other, to satellite channels racing to purchase the best series’ screening rights and advertising revenues being the central source of profit. The main issues concerned increasing production budgets and the skyrocketing salaries of certain stars.
  • the state was preparing a plan to exert control over the entire market. The first signs of this plan emerged in June 2017, with statements by the president and a number of government officials voicing their displeasure with the content offered on Ramadan TV series, and their desire to remedy the situation. This remedy manifested in the form of extreme censorship measures, including the establishment of the Drama Committee within the Supreme Meda Regulatory Council, designed to monitor the TV drama industry.
  • The effects of these directives became apparent last year in the striking similarity of the content of the series released, as well as the ubiquity of police and army officers as characters in most of them
  • satellite channels, many of which — including ONtv and Al Hayah — are currently controlled by EMG, owned by Eagle Capital for Financial Investment, a private equity fund founded by Egypt’s General Intelligence Services (GIS)
  • Television channels, sources say, will fill up the remaining airtime — previously overflowing with series — with variety television shows, including talk and game shows, instead. Tawfiq Okasha, the controversial media personality who made his comeback in March — courtesy of  Synergy Productions and EMG — recently dedicated a segment on his show (which airs on Al Hayah) to criticizing actors and “the obscene sums of money they demand.” Okasha then proceeded to discuss a plan to bring down the number of series airing this Ramadan to 18, with each television channel airing only three.
  • as a result of this monopoly, many producers are out of work this year, including Beelink’s Mohamed Mashish, El Adl Group’s Maha Selim, and producer Ahmed Al Sobky, when the three of them combined had eight series screening last Ramadan
  • The initial outcome of Morsy’s monopoly over the Egyptian drama market became clear last year with the elimination of certain series from Egypt’s Ramadan season, including El Adl Group’s We Have Other Statements (starring Youssra) and Land of Hypocrisy (starring Mohamed Heneidy), which were only aired on non-Egyptian channels, as well as Beelink Productions’ What Came to Pass (starring Ruby), which was not broadcast at all. Now, with Morsy’s newly acquired control over more channels, in addition to EMG’s acquisition of shares in the CBC television network and Morsy’s partnership with D Media, it appears that other producers will no longer have access to air their series in Egypt. Both D Media and DMC, another prominent television network, are owned by the GIS.
  • difficulties the company faced when filming last year’s Eagle of the South, as a result of excessive military intervention in the series’ content and production process. Members of the Armed Forces were often present on set and would interfere in most details during the shoot, not to mention that the show’s star, Mohamed Ramadan, would often miss shoots because his military conscription service overlapped with shooting times. Sometimes, he would arrive to the shooting location in a military vehicle
  • Shaaban believes that the current setback in television production has been primarily brought on by declining economic conditions, which have led to a decrease in advertising budgets. The industry, he says, is built on the flow of money from advertising agencies to satellite channels to production companies. If channels were reaping advertising revenues, they would be able to buy series from producers, who in turn would be able to produce more series, and so on. However, given the current economic climate, corporations haven’t been spending as much on advertising as they used to, and this has definitely affected the production cycle.
  • prominent actor Adel Imam, who could potentially miss his first Ramadan season in seven years, due to alleged censorial objections to the subject matter of his new series, in which he was reportedly set to play the president’s physician
  • most seem to attribute it to the president, who appears to be irked by the scale the industry had come to operate on and the high salaries paid to TV stars
  • It is possible that, for the first time in history, the Egyptian drama sector will produce less work than its counterparts in Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait, who produce 10 to 20 works on average each Ramadan season.
  • 2 million Egyptian workers of all stripes who contribute to and depend upon this industry, patiently waiting for the Ramadan season from year to year
  • Medhat estimates that the industry spends about LE2 billion annually and brings in about LE4 billion in revenue — all of which, in the 2019 season, will go almost entirely to one entity
  • One interpretation of these recent developments is that the Egyptian state — nostalgic for the heyday of state television, when the state alone was in control of all television productions — is planning a comeback under new terms, tailored to fit the demands of the current moment. After exerting its control over satellite TV channels, it now seeks to control production as well, in order to keep the media and entertainment sectors securely under its wing, only for the state to emerge once again as the only player on the local scene.
Ed Webb

Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match - The New York Times - 0 views

  • they had shared and could recite the viral Facebook memes constructing an alternate reality of nefarious Muslim plots. Mr. Lal called them “the embers beneath the ashes” of Sinhalese anger
  • the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions.
  • Time and again, communal hatreds overrun the newsfeed — the primary portal for news and information for many users — unchecked as local media are displaced by Facebook and governments find themselves with little leverage over the company. Some users, energized by hate speech and misinformation, plot real-world attacks.
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  • Facebook’s newsfeed played a central role in nearly every step from rumor to killing
  • Facebook officials, they say, ignored repeated warnings of the potential for violence, resisting pressure to hire moderators or establish emergency points of contact
  • the imagined Ampara, which exists in rumors and memes on Sinhalese-speaking Facebook, is the shadowy epicenter of a Muslim plot to sterilize and destroy Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority
  • The mob, hearing confirmation, beat him, destroyed the shop and set fire to the local mosque.
  • As Facebook pushes into developing countries, it tends to be initially received as a force for good.In Sri Lanka, it keeps families in touch even as many work abroad. It provides for unprecedented open expression and access to information. Government officials say it was essential for the democratic transition that swept them into office in 2015.But where institutions are weak or undeveloped, Facebook’s newsfeed can inadvertently amplify dangerous tendencies. Designed to maximize user time on site, it promotes whatever wins the most attention. Posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, studies have found, produce the highest engagement, and so proliferate
  • in developing countries, Facebook is often perceived as synonymous with the internet and reputable sources are scarce, allowing emotionally charged rumors to run rampant
  • Last year, in rural Indonesia, rumors spread on Facebook and WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messaging tool, that gangs were kidnapping local children and selling their organs. Some messages included photos of dismembered bodies or fake police fliers. Almost immediately, locals in nine villages lynched outsiders they suspected of coming for their children.
  • Near-identical social media rumors have also led to attacks in India and Mexico. Lynchings are increasingly filmed and posted back to Facebook, where they go viral as grisly tutorials
  • No organization has ever had to police billions of users in a panoply of languages.
  • Before Facebook, he said, officials facing communal violence “could ask media heads to be sensible, they could have their own media strategy.”
  • Desperate, the researchers flagged the video and subsequent posts using Facebook’s on-site reporting tool.Though they and government officials had repeatedly asked Facebook to establish direct lines, the company had insisted this tool would be sufficient, they said. But nearly every report got the same response: the content did not violate Facebook’s standards. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “You report to Facebook, they do nothing,” one of the researchers, Amalini De Sayrah, said. “There’s incitements to violence against entire communities and Facebook says it doesn’t violate community standards.”
  • Facebook still appears to employ few Sinhalese moderators. A call to a third-party employment service revealed that around 25 Sinhalese moderator openings, first listed last June, remain unfilled. The jobs are based in India, which has few Sinhalese speakers.
  • “We’re a society, we’re not just a market.”
  • Its gamelike interface rewards engagement, delivering a dopamine boost when users accrue likes and responses, training users to indulge behaviors that win affirmation.
  • the greatest rush comes by attacking outsiders: The other sports team. The other political party. The ethnic minority.
  • Mass media has long been used to mobilize mass violence. Facebook, by democratizing communication tools, gives anyone with a smartphone the ability to broadcast hate.
  • Mr. Weerasinghe posted a video that showed him walking the shops of a town called Digana, warning that too many were owned by Muslims, urging Sinhalese to take the town back. The researchers in Colombo reported his video to Facebook, along with his earlier posts, but all remained online.
  • the government temporarily blocked most social media. Only then did Facebook representatives get in touch with Sri Lankan officials, they say. Mr. Weerasinghe’s page was closed the same day.
  • officials rushed out statements debunking the sterilization rumors but could not match Facebook’s influence
  • Despite criticism and concerns from civil society groups, the company has done little to change its strategy of pushing into developing societies with weak institutions and histories of social instability, opening up information spaces where anger and fear often can dominate
  • From October to March, Facebook presented users in six countries, including Sri Lanka, with a separate newsfeed prioritizing content from friends and family. Posts by professional media were hidden away on another tab.“While this experiment lasted, many of us missed out on the bigger picture, on more credible news,” said Nalaka Gunawardene, a Sri Lankan media analyst. “It’s possible that this experiment inadvertently spread hate views in these six countries.”
  • government officials said, they face the same problem as before. Facebook wields enormous influence over their society, but they have little over Facebook.
  • Facebook had turned him into a national villain. It helped destroy his business, sending his family deeply into debt. And it had nearly gotten him killed.But he refused to abandon the platform. With long, empty days in hiding, he said, “I have more time and I look at Facebook much more.”“It’s not that I have more faith that social media is accurate, but you have to spend time and money to go to the market to get a newspaper,” he said. “I can just open my phone and get the news instead.”“Whether it’s wrong or right, it’s what I read.”
Ed Webb

China Expands Media Dominance in Africa - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

  • Liao Liang's mission in the Kenyan capital is hardly confidential: As a senior editor of the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of Chinese state television, his task is that of shining a positive light on his country's ambitious activities -- particularly those in Africa, where China's reputation has suffered as its footprint has grown.
  • "It's an apartheid system," he says, with the Chinese at the top, then the whites, then the blacks and at the very bottom are the Kenyans. "We have to let the Chinese go first in the restrooms and we're only allowed to eat in the cafeteria after 1 p.m., after they have eaten. They treat us like their inferiors." Sometimes, James M. says, he only receives half of his contractual editor's salary of 2,000 euros per month. He says he is penalized 2,000 shillings - around 17 euros - for every mistake in his stories, including typos.
  • CGTN journalists aren't just there to ward off criticism of China's expansion in Africa but also to break the West's media dominance. The broadcaster has a similar mission in Africa as Russia's state broadcaster RT does in Europe.
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  • According to one survey, the majority of Africans welcome the Chinese involvement, but critics, such as the Senegalese author Adama Gaye, have warned of a new form of colonialism
  • China has thrown its support behind diplomatic initiatives and has contributed around 2,500 troops to UN peacekeeping missions in Congo, South Sudan and Mali. China is also helping with efforts to combat the Ebola epidemic and it even funded the construction of the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. The country has also established 49 Confucius Institutes across the continent, which promote the Chinese language and culture. At the heart of China's Going Out policy is a media offensive launched in March 2018, an initiative coordinated by the broadcast group Voice of China and carefully monitored by Communist Party censors. In addition, the state-run news agency Xinhua was expanded and now claims to be the largest news wire in the world.
  • Every year, 1,000 African journalists take part in training programs in China and Chinese investors have been investing heavily in African media outlets. The TV station StarTimes now broadcasts its paid offerings in 30 African countries and declares itself to be the most influential digital channel on the continent.
  • it is the only television station in the world that broadcasts in all six official UN languages. It has 79 million Facebook followers, which is roughly as many as the BBC and CNN combined
  • CGTN employs around 150 people, including journalists from China, South Africa, Britain, Nigeria and Kenya, yet even when promised anonymity, nobody initially agreed to speak with DER SPIEGEL. "They're afraid of Liao," an employee would later say.
  • "We don't produce independent journalism, but pure propaganda by order of the Communist Party." He says the goal is that of presenting the most harmonious image possible of China's activities in Africa, including construction sites full of smiling workers and positive coverage of massive endeavors like dams and other mega-projects along with humanitarian aid contributions.
  • He shows a text message that he recently received from the boss: "No reports on the chaos!" The reference was to political disturbances in a country in Africa.
  • particularly sensitive texts have to be reviewed in Beijing and if the censors disapprove, the stories are killed. "Criticism of the government, human rights issues or analysis of the growing amount of African debt held by the Chinese are all taboo,"
  • In September, the journalist Azad Essa reported on China's oppression of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in China, and was fired afterward. His employer, Independent Media, is the second-largest media outlet in South Africa. And since 2013, a Chinese investor has held a 20-percent stake
  • "We have good relations with the Chinese, even if they would rather stick to themselves." Mwaura is a 40-year-old Kenyan reporter who works for the Xinhua news agency and his view of the situation is much less dark. He believes that local media outlets poison relations with the Chinese because they don't understand Chinese culture and are still under the influence of British colonial attitudes. Mwaura says China's involvement in Africa is a win-win scenario that helps bring the continent forward. Claims that China is conquering Africa, he says, are just "stupid chatter" from bloggers who are on the payroll of Western embassies. He views his task as that of providing more optimistic coverage to counter such "negativity."
  • Mwaura says he can write about whatever he wants, but adds that his supervisors ensure that reports are "politically correct," meaning that they reflect the communist worldview. After all, he says, "we are working on behalf of the geopolitical interests of the Chinese state."
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