Many months have passed since May 11, 2011, the day Bob Marley died thirty years ago and the day I published my research project ‘Babylon by Bus. Bob Marley and the Wailers in the Netherlands‘ in tribute to Marley and the Wailers. For those of you who have missed it, the document can be downloaded and read freely from my website. Here is a short list with websites who have written about ‘Babylon by Bus’ … Continue reading
The World Wide Web has long been hailed as the medium that would revive the civil society and the public sphere, by means of providing digital spaces for political deliberation, discussion and – with the introduction of ‘Web 2.0’ – other forms of interactive participation. Media and communication scholars have been writing about the potential of e-democracy for about twenty years, ever since the Internet became widely available in the ‘developed world’ in the 1990s. … Continue reading
Coverage of international news in print media has been declining significantly over the last decade. A recent report about international news called ‘Shrinking World’ showed for example that there has been a drop of approximately forty percent in international news coverage across UK national newspapers such as the Guardian, Telegraph, Mail and Mirror. International news now only makes up eleven percent of the news, in comparison to twenty percent in 1979 (Moore, 2010). American Journalism … Continue reading
In 2003 Frank Warren – the founder of PostSecret.com – visited Paris for the first time in his life. Upon arrival he bought three postcards which then appeared at night in a lucid dream Warren had. In his dream the postcards had been altered, written upon. After waking up Warren recreated the postcards as he had seen them in his dream, which meant the start of the ‘reluctant oracle’ project what would eventually become the … Continue reading
In the summer of 2010 the seemingly impossible happened: for the first time since the lost finals of 1970 and 1974 the Dutch football team managed to get to the final of the World Cup. Although Spain proved to be the better team in the final, the successes in the World Cup meant a summer full of festive television viewing for the Dutch. From a media perspective the World Cup was also a interesting event … Continue reading
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century scholars have become increasingly interested in the dynamic interactions between the local and the global and its interventions into the production, diffusion and reception of popular culture (Biddle & Knight 2007). The “cultural globalization – the growing international diffusion, exchange, and intermingling of cultural goods and media products – is the most visible manifestation of globalization in everyday life” (Crane, Kawashima & Kawasaki 2002; as cited in Janssen, … Continue reading
On January 12 2010 an earthquake of catastrophic magnitude followed by aftershocks hit Haiti. About three million people were affected, of which at least 230 000 died while many more were left injured and homeless. Already the day after the earthquake, personnel, medicines, and other means of aid arrived in Haiti while the disaster was being covered by the mainstream media and the need for help for Haiti promoted through Haiti-born singer and celebrity Wyclef … Continue reading
In exposing images of human suffering, the news media provide publicity and give the audience the possibility to respond as “good citizens with compassion and rational commitment”, as “global compassion is considered to be morally correct in the striving for cosmopolitan democracy” (Hoijer, 2004, 513). From this perspective it would seem that the mainstream media have the potential to generate a cosmopolitan public, as most people indeed become aware of the remote suffering of others … Continue reading