Full Description
Making Human Rights News: Balancing Participation and Professionalism explores the impact of new digital technology and activism on the production of human rights messages. It is the first collection of studies to combine multidisciplinary approaches, "citizen witness" challenges to journalism ethics, and expert assessments of the "liberating role" of the Internet, addressing the following questions:
1. What can scholars from a wide range of disciplines - including communication studies, journalism, sociology, political science, and international relations/studies - add to traditional legal and political human rights discussions, exploring the impact of innovative digital information technologies on the gathering and dissemination of human rights news?
2. What questions about journalism ethics and professionalism arise as growing numbers of untrained "citizen witnesses" use modern mobile technology to document claims of human rights abuses?
3. What are the limits of the "liberating role" of the Internet in challenging traditional sources of authority and credibility, such as professional journalists and human rights professionals?
4. How do greater Internet access and human rights activism interact with variations in press freedom and government censorship worldwide to promote respect for different categories of human rights, such as women's rights and rights to health?
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights.
Contents
Introduction: Human Rights in the News: Balancing New Media Participation with the Authority of Journalism and Human Rights Professionals. 1. A New Era of Human Rights News? Contrasting Two Paradigms of Human Rights News Making 2. Source Credibility as 'Information Subsidy': Strategies for Successful NGO Journalism at Mexican Human Rights NGOs 3. The Rise of Eyewitness Video and Its Implications for Human Rights: Conceptual and Methodological Approaches 4. Non Profit Product Placement: Human Rights Advocacy in Film and Television 5. Promoting the People's Surrogate: The Case for Press Freedom as a Distinct Human Right 6. News about Her: The Effects of Media Freedom and Internet Access on Women's Rights 7. Beyond Naming and Shaming: New Modalities of Information Politics in Human Rights
