Press

October 2011

Evaluating Media Interventions in Conflict Countries: Toward Developing Common Principles and a Community of Practice (a USIP PeaceWorks report) is the result of an ongoing discussion among media development practitioners, donors and academics about the importance of monitoring and evaluation of media programs, particularly in conflict countries. 

The report emerged from discussions held in December 2010 in Caux, Switzerland, convened by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, CGCS, Fondation Hirondelle, Internews Network, and USIP. The goal was to develop a shared set of approaches and best practices--the "Caux Principles"--for identifying the role that media and information programs can and do play in conflict and post conflict countries. 

The partners hope that the Caux Principles represent just afirst step in establishing an open and inclusive community of practice dedicated to improving evaluation in order to better inform future programs and ultimately better serve the vulnerable populations which these programs seek to aid.  

August 2011

CGCS Director Monroe Price and Annenberg PhD student Lauren Kogen co-authored an article in the August 2011 issue of Media, War and Conflict, an international, peer-reviewed journal that maps the shifting arena of war, conflict and terrorism and its intersections with the media. 

In the article, "Deflecting the CNN Effect: Public Opinion Polling and Livingstonian Outcomes," the authors draw upon polling experience in Darfur to examine whether the analysis and dissemination of public opinion polling can help shift public debate and reframe an issue that has been strongly influenced by CNN-like mediated activities. 

June 23, 2011

In a post on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy's blog, Monroe Price and Lieutenant Sam Jacobson discuss the 'psyops', or 'psychological operations', and RIAB, the "Radio in a Box" technique used by the U.S. military to improve communications between the Afghan National Army and the public. Lieutenant Jacobson describes his on-the-ground experience distributing low-tech portable radios to locals and producing content to allow the Afghan army to communicate with the people, providing news, music, and important information.

Click here for the discussion.

January 24, 2011

Ellen Hume, Annenberg Fellow in Civic Media at Central European University, has released a new report with CIMA, Caught in the Middle: Central and Eastern European Journalism at a Crossroads. Journalists in Central and Eastern Europe are struggling to hold on to the gains they made in the first two decades after communism. Ethical journalists in this region face a triple threat: a backsliding against the 1990s democratic reforms, a global Internet-driven erosion of the media business model, and the continuing world economic crisis that is exposing the fragility of democratic institutions. This report examines the state of independent news media in Central and Eastern Europe 20 years after the fall of communism. The report is available for download from the CIMA website.

January 13, 2011

CGCS Director Monroe Price was interviewed by former CGCS Visiting Scholar Professor Long Yun for the December 2010 edition of Modern Communication, the journal of the Communication University of China.  In the interview they discuss the development of global communication, differences in communication research between China and the US, and Professor Price's networking abilities.  The interview is available in Chinese and English.

January 3, 2011

CCGS Director Monroe Price recorded a brief talk about WikiLeaks for the ICCD/Internews Internet, Media and Law conference taking place in Bangkok, Thailand January 6-7, 2011.  The video is available from the Annenberg YouTube channel.

Professor Price also blogged about WikiLeaks on the Huffington Post in a post titled "Battening Down the Hatches, Circling the Wagons: The WikiLeak Effect on the Public Diplomacy of Internet Advocacy".

December 15, 2010

China in Africa: A new approach to media development? (November 2010)

CGCS partners PCMLP and the Stanhope Centre have published a new report addressing China’s growing influence in Africa’s communications sector and its implications on the prevailing approaches to media assistance and media development in Africa and beyond. The report is the result of a conversation among scholars from Africa, China, and Europe who gathered for a workshop in Oxford in June 2010 to build a common research agenda and to develop an innovative and multi-actor approach to studying the transformations experienced by media systems in an increasingly multi-polar world.  For more information please visit the PCMLP and Stanhope websites.

December 14, 2010

Rob McMahon, CGCS Spring 2010 Visiting Scholar and graduate student at Simon Fraser University, has published a research project on First Nations and Inuit broadband development with Richard Smith (Simon Fraser University) and Susan O'Donnell (University of New Brunswick), along with some First Nations research partners, inspired in part by the research on indigenous broadband development in Canada/U.S. that he did while visiting CGCS.  Putting the 'Last-Mile' First: Re-framing Broadband Development in First Nations and Inuit Communities is available online.

His research group has also started a 'First Mile' website and the 'First Mile Connectivity Consortium' as an outcome of the report.

October 20, 2010

Annenberg PhD student Christopher Ali has a new guest post at the Center for Social Media blog, part of American University's School of Communication.  He discusses his research on the public participation efforts of three government agencies through the lense of public media and examines the Obama administration's 2009 Open Government Initiative.  For the full post click here.

September 21, 2010

Monroe Price responded to questions from Professor Jack Linchuan Qiu and colleagues at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong in the September 2010 issue of the Chinese Journal of Communication.  The full interview is available here.

September 2, 2010

CGCS's partner the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) will hold a conference to explore creative ways to address the boundaries of online free expression; the complex relationship among technology, economic growth and human rights; ways in which dissidents and governments are using the internet; the role of internet intermediaries; and pressing policy and legal issues such as privacy and cybersecurity.  Co-sponsored by Google and Central European University, the conference will take place September 20-22 in Budapest and will bring together grassroots global activists alongside representatives of NGOs, academic centers, governments and corporations.

Due to limited venue capacity, Internet at Liberty 2010 is by invitation only and spaces are limited. If you know of someone who might be interested in attending, please ask them to request an invitation by emailing liberty2010@google.com with some information about what they do and why they would like to attend.

For more information please visit the CMCS website.

August 27, 2010

The Workshop of Media Ethics and Law opened in Tsinghua University the morning of August 22, 2010. The workshop was organized by the Chinese Association of Global Communication in collaboration with UNESCO, the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Social Policy of Oxford University and the US-China Education Trust. More than 70 participants came from over 40 universities and media organizations, including international scholars from Spain, France, Estonia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

The opening ceremony was presided over by Prof. Chen Changfeng, Vice President of Chinese Association of Global Communication and keynote speeches were given by Mr. Mogens Schmidt, Deputy Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, UNESCO and Prof. Clifford Christians, Professor of Journalism, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A full list of speakers and more details can be found here.

August 3, 2010

CGCS and the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) are pleased to release a new report, Evaluating the Evaluators: Media Freedom Indexes and What They Measure. All over the world, studies that rank countries by media freedom figure prominently in civil liberties debates, aid programming, foreign policy decisions, and academic research. Evaluating the Evaluators: Media Freedom Indexes and What They Measure examines the strengths and shortcomings of existing media freedom indexes and offers recommendations to improve them. In view of the breadth and depth of these studies, the report recommends that organizations that evaluate press freedom continue to refine their methodology by increasing technical sophistication, cultural neutrality, and transparency and that they incorporate digital media into their evaluations. The report, by John Burgess, a former Washington Post reporter and editor who specializes in international affairs and technology, is based on a collection of academic papers on this subject submitted to the Annenberg School for Communication.

To request a hard copy of the report please contact CGCS at cgcs@asc.upenn.edu or 215-898-9727.

August 3, 2010

"The Battle over Internet Regulatory Paradigms: An Intensifying Area for Public Diplomacy", Monroe Price's most recent post for the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, can be found here.

July 20, 2010

Monroe Price was interviewed in the Summer 2010 issue of the IE University alumni magazine by Dean Samuel Martin-Barbero of the IE School of Communication.  Read the full interview on global political communication here.

June 7, 2010

Renmin University in Beijing will begin a health communication program with help from faculty and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

A Summer Institute for Health Communication Studies will take place at Renmin University June 28 – July 14. During that time faculty from Annenberg will lead classroom sessions on a variety of health communication subjects. The participants will include junior faculty members and advanced graduate students from selected Chinese universities.

More information and the full press release is available from the Annenberg website.

May 11, 2010

Spring 2010 CGCS Visiting Scholar Sahana Udupa's article, "Mediatized India: Publics, Policy, and Politics of Media Visibility", part of the India in Transition series hosted by the Center for Advanced Studies of India, is now available online.

May 5, 2010

The 2010 Milton Wolf Seminar Report, by Annenberg PhD student Felicity Duncan is now available.

More information about the Milton Wolf Seminar is available here.

Objects of Remembrance is a reflection on the power of American assimilation and opportunity in the face of persisting refugee realities. Like Isaac Bashevis Singer, Monroe Price recounts the continuing impact of European identities as families, cast from their homes by the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, struggle to find their way in a new and challenging environment.

“An intimate and provocative meditation on Jewish life between the old and the new world.” Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader

The book is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

The Center for Global Communication Studies is pleased to announce the launch of an online essay series on NGOs and the News: Exploring a Changing Communications Landscape.

The series, produced in collaboration with the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, seeks to explore the increasing activity of civil society actors such as NGOs and advocacy networks and in the news media sphere,

Each week, for the next three months, we will feature a new essay on the subject.  

We invite you to join in the discussion and encourage others to do so as well. Please visit the essay site to read the essays and post comments. If you are interested in contributing an essay, please contact CGCS.

September 10, 2009

This report explores media policy during periods of post-election violence through the cases of Kenya and Somaliland.

It is part of a larger project on information flows in the internationally unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.  Somaliland's presidential elections have been postponed a number of times, most recently from September 2009. In the contentious political environment, the media will have an important role in either exacerbating or alleviating political violence. Through an examination of the case of Kenya, where 1,133 people were killed after the 2007 elections, the report seeks to distill lessons for media policy in Somaliland in advance of the elections.

Read the report.

June 19, 2009

Ellen Hume is the new Annenberg Fellow in Civic Media in the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS).

In this role, Ms. Hume will be based at the Central European University’s Center for Media and Communications Studies (CMCS) in Budapest, Hungary, where she will continue her civic media work and participate in research projects the two institutions undertake.

Read more.

CIRC participants discuss their perspectives on free speech and Internet in China

The Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia recently hosted the 7th Annual Chinese Internet Research Conference. Discussing free speech and access on the web, several scholars attending the conference sat down before a camera and shared their perspectives.

April 2009

In April, 2009, the Jordan Media Strengthening Program published a comprehensive overview of the laws, policies, institutions and practices governing news media in Jordan. The report, available in English and Arabic, represents the culmination of the JMSP's work in Jordan over the past three years. Read the May 1, 2009 story from the Jordan Times.

October 2008

With the assistance of the Center for Global Communication Studies, USAID’s Jordan Media Strengthening Programme (IREX) will provide technical assistance to Yarmouk University for the development of a media law course to be offered to students starting in the next academic year. Read the October 27, 2008 story from the Jordan Times.

May 2007

CGCS Director Monroe E. Price featured in the May/June 2007 issue of The Pennsylvania Gazette.