Communications At The Crossroads

This edited volume addresses current challenges, trends and transformations in global communication governance. Exploring changes in the actors, issues, values and contexts of media and communications, it investigates the crossroads that media policy is facing and offers visions for the future. A diverse range of scholars and expert practitioners discuss what regulatory reforms and governing mechanisms are required to advance democratic participation and fundamental rights in platform societies. Organized around five sections, the volume considers the geopolitics of emerging communication orders; the changing roles of actors and stakeholders; the challenge of embedding rights and values in regulatory arrangements; the intersection of technology and policy; and the need to rethink epistemologies and methodologies for researching this field. Contributions from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds include provocative think pieces and longer analyses. All chapters are grounded in historically-aware understandings of contemporary transformations, while anticipating dynamics of our communication futures.

This book examines the shifting role of media trust in a digital world, and critically analyzes how news and stories are created, distributed and consumed. Emphasis is placed on the current challenges and possible solutions to regain trust and restore credibility. The book reveals the role of trust in communication, in society and in media, and subsequently addresses media at the crossroads, as evinced by phenomena like gatekeepers, echo chambers and fake news. The following chapters explore truth and trust in journalism, the role of algorithms and robots in media, and the relation between social media and individual trust. The book then presents case studies highlighting how media creates trust in the contexts of: brands and businesses, politics and non-governmental organizations, science and education. In closing, it discusses the road ahead, with a focus on users, writers, platforms and communication in general, and on media competency, skills and education in particular.

Providing perspectives on women's issues and the communication process, this book contends that communications is at important crossroads because of, rather than in spite of, women. They challenge that women's language, reality, orientations, and experiences are different from those of men. A further challenge makes the case for breaking the hold and subsequent control by traditional mass media on women's issues.

Bible translators have focused their efforts on preparing a text that is clear, natural and accurate, with the expectation that audiences will understand the message if it is in their language. Field research among the Adioukrou of Côte d'Ivoire shows that audiences also need to have access to the contextual information the author expected his audience to bring to the text. When such information is provided, both understanding of and interest in the message increase dramatically. These findings support Relevance Theory's claim that meaning is inferred from the interaction of text and context. To the extent that the contextual knowledge evoked by the text for contemporary audiences differs from that evoked for the first audience, understanding is impaired. The Bible at Cultural Crossroads presents a model to assist translators in identifying contextual mismatches and applies it on the thematic level to mismatches between first-century Jewish and Adioukrou views of the unseen world, and on the passage level to contextual mismatches arising from four Gospel passages. In-text and out-of-text solutions for adjusting contextual mismatches are explored, with field research results showing the effectiveness of various solutions. Context is shown to be both a significant factor in communication and a dynamic one. Translations of the text alone are not sufficient for successful communication.

Digital communication as it is practiced in Africa today is at a crossroad. This edited collection takes that crossroad as its starting point, as it both examines the complicated present and looks to the uncertain future of African communication systems. Contributing authors explore how western digital communication systems have proliferated in the African communication landscape, and argue that rich and long-cherished African forms of communal, in-person communication have been increasingly abandoned in favor of assimilation to western digital norms. As a result, future generations of Africans born on the continent and abroad may never recognize and appreciate African systems of communications. Acknowledging that globalized digital communication systems are here to stay, the volume contends that in order to comprehend the past, present, and future of African communications, scholars need to decolonize their approach to teaching and consuming mediated and in-person communications on the African continent and abroad.

This volume aims at contributing to an interpretive approach to writing and its dynamics. It offers a general scope on the process-product interface by multiplying the points of view on both the process and the product and their links. The book presents new findings and perspectives in the study of language and writing, both theoretical and methodological (e.g. dual process models of writing, pragmatics of writing, linguistic analysis of psycholinguistic units such as bursts of production). It also presents new tools for a longitudinal approach to the writing steps, key-stroke logging with integrated linguistic modules, and textometric analysis of written texts. The volume is composed of five sections that highlight different approaches to writing from the viewpoint of multiple disciplines: Anthropology, Cognitive Psycholinguistics, Communication Studies, Didactics (Applied Linguistics), Discourse Analysis, Literacy, Sociolinguistics and Text Genetics. This book will be relevant for scholars and students interested in writing, text analysis, literacy, learning and teaching. As of January 2019, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.