Comments on digital news stories and on social media play an increasingly important role in public discourse as more citizens communicate through online networks. The reasons for eliminating comments on news stories are plentiful. Off-topic posts and toxic commentary have been shown to undermine legitimate news reporting. Yet the proliferation of digital communication technology has revolutionized the setting for democratic participation. The digital exchange of ideas and opinions is now a vital component of the democratic landscape. Marie K. Shanahan's book argues that public digital discourse is crucial component of modern democracy—one that journalists must stop treating with indifference or detachment—and for news organizations to use journalistic rigor and better design to add value to citizens’ comments above the social layer. Through original interviews, anecdotes, field observations and summaries of research literature, Shanahan explains the obstacles of digital discourse as well as its promises for journalists in the digital age.

This timely book explores how the internet and social media have permanently altered the media landscape, enabling new actors to enter the marketplace, and changing the way that news is generated, published and consumed. It examines the importance of citizen journalists, whose newsgathering and publication activities have made them crucial to public discourse and central actors in the communication revolution. Investigating how the internet and social media have enabled citizen journalism to flourish, and what this means for the traditional institutional press, the public sphere, and media freedom, the book demonstrates how communication and legal theory are applied in practice.

This book is an authoritative discussion of user comments and moderation in digital journalism, examining how user comments have disrupted the field of journalism and how a growing number of news organizations have abandoned commenting features altogether. Making a broad argument concerning user commentary as a manifestation of user engagement and public deliberation, User Comments and Moderation in Digital Journalism: Disruptive Engagement conceptualizes the act of commenting as interactive engagement and participation in a virtual public sphere. The book also explores the organizational policies that have the potential to disrupt – as well as improve – the quality of user discussions. Ultimately, strategies are proposed for managing and improving user comments and encouraging more productive public deliberation in digital journalism. This engaging discussion of a key development in digital journalism is a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of journalism, media and communication studies.

"Online discussions in the form of readers' comments are a central part of many news sites and social media platforms. In this book, Tamara Kunić explores and interprets the ways in which digital technology has impacted the production and dissemination of content and the need to adapt in the age of a new audience, the prosumer"--

Pandemics are potentially very destructive phenomena, and for that reason, they both fascinate and frighten us. And because they are shot through with uncertainty, they often become sites of contestation and conflict. This book presents research on the 2009 pandemic and other public health crises in an attempt to describe and analyze the distinctive challenges that such diseases pose today. Thanks to vaccines, more reliable provision of medical services, more effective means of communication, and a more educated public, some argue we will not see a new Black Plague – or even Spanish Flu – in our time. Today we face new challenges, however, which can both enable diseases to reach pandemic scales and affect our ability to enact an appropriate response. Those include fragmentation of media, tribalization of “knowledge regimes,” the increasingly troubled status of scientific and political expertise, growing cross-continental mobility, as well as the globalization and commercialization of pandemic response systems. These distinctive complexities make the need to stage public action in response to pandemics and other public health crises a crucial problem, on which thousands of human lives hinge. This volume consists of a handful of social science and humanities studies of precisely such complexities, and thus offers a much-needed supplement to existing research on pandemics and pandemic response.

The New York Times bestseller, now updated with new material on cyber attacks, digital sovereignty, and tech in a pandemic. From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates. “A colorful and insightful insiders’ view of how technology is both empowering and threatening us. From privacy to cyberattacks, this timely book is a useful guide for how to navigate the digital future.” —Walter Isaacson Microsoft president Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the top of Microsoft, as the company flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with disruption as an end in itself, and in doing so navigates some of the thorniest issues of our time—from privacy to cyberwar to the challenges for democracy, far and near. As the tumultuous events of 2020 brought technology and Big Tech even further into the lives of almost all Americans, Smith and Browne updated the book throughout to reflect a changed world. With three new chapters on cybersecurity, technology and nation-states, and tech in the pandemic, Tools and Weapons is an invaluable resource from the cockpit of one of the world’s largest tech companies.

This book explores the relationship between the safety of journalists and self-censorship practices around the world, including local case studies and regional and international perspectives. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the globe, Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship provides new and updated insights into patterns of self-censorship and free speech, focusing on a variety of factors that affect these issues, including surveillance, legislation, threats, violent conflict, gender-related stereotypes, digitisation and social media. The contributions examine topics such as trauma, risk and self-censorship among journalists in different regions of the world, including Central America, Estonia, Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan. The book also provides conceptual clarity to the notion of journalist self-censorship, and explores the question of how self-censorship may be studied empirically. Combining both theoretical and practical knowledge, this collection serves as a much-needed resource for any academic, student of journalism, practicing journalist, or NGO working on issues of journalism, safety, free speech and censorship.

Monumental cares rethinks monument debates, site specificity and art activism in light of problems that strike us as monumental or overwhelming, such as war, migration and the climate crisis. The book shows how artists address these issues, from Chicago and Berlin to Oslo, Bucharest and Hong Kong, in media ranging from marble and glass to postcards, graffiti and re-enactment. A multidirectional theory of site does justice to specific places but also to how far-away audiences see them. What emerges is a new ethics of care in public art, combined with a passionate engagement with reality harking back to the realist aesthetics of the nineteenth century. Familiar questions can be answered anew: what to do with monuments, particularly when they are the products of terror and require removal, modification or recontextualisation? And can art address the monumental concerns of our present?

This volume draws together research originally presented at the 2015 Future of Journalism conference at Cardiff University, UK. The conference theme, ‘Risks, Threats and Opportunities,’ highlighted five areas of particular concern for discussion and debate. The first of these areas, ‘Journalism and Social Media’, explores how journalism and the role of the journalist are being redefined in the digital age of social networking, crowd-sourcing and ‘big data’, and how the influence of media like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit affects the gathering, reporting or consumption of news? ‘Journalists at Risk’ assesses the key issues surrounding journalists’ safety and their right to report, as news organizations and their sources are increasingly targeted in war, conflict or crisis situations. The third area, ‘Journalism Under Surveillance’, asks what freedom of the press means in a post-Snowden climate. What are the new forms of censorship confronting journalism today, and what emergent tactics will help it to speak truth to power? ‘Journalism and the Fifth Estate’ examines the traditional ideals of the fourth estate, which risk looking outdated, if not obsolete, in the modern world. How much can we rely on citizen media to produce alternative forms of news reporting, and how can we reform mainstream media institutions to make them more open, transparent and accountable to the public? The final area, ‘Journalism’s Values’, asks how journalism’s ethical principles and moral standards are evolving in relation to the democratic cultures of communities locally, regionally, nationally or internationally. What are the implications of changing priorities for the education, training and employment of tomorrow’s journalists? Every chapter in this volume engages with a pressing issue for the future of journalism, offering an original, thought-provoking perspective intended to help facilitate further dialogue and debate. The chapters in this book were originally published in special issues of Digital Journalism, Journalism Practice, and Journalism Studies.

This book presents selected international research on journalism and safety with a focus on digital threats against journalists and their professional practices. It offers an overview of ongoing developments in the field of journalism and safety from diverse regions around the world. From various theoretical, conceptual and empirical perspectives, the chapters address the escalating global concern of pervasive phenomena such as cyber-surveillance, orchestrated attacks, trolling and online harassment and underscore the precariousness of journalists' work in various geographical locations. A section of the book examines the safety conditions of female journalists, focusing on their responses to gendered online attacks and hate speech, whereas another section analyses and discusses institutional and cultural responses to journalists’ safety. The chapters draw on data from diverse geo-cultural regions globally, and collectively the volume provides a comprehensive overview of recent research on digital threats to journalists’ safety and responses to some of the challenges. Additionally, it presents valuable concepts for further scholarly reflection on these issues. The second of two volumes, this book will be a key resource for scholars, practitioners and researchers of journalism, media and cultural studies, communication studies, and sociology. The chapters in the book were originally published in Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies, and Journalism Practice.