Itinerant Booksellers: Necessary Evils to the Book Trade in Ghana?

Itinerant booksellers play very significant but less noticeable role in the book trade in Ghana and many developing economies. They are the mobile booksellers who carry their collections to the doorsteps of their consumers. This paper highlights the contributions of itinerant booksellers to book distribution in Ghana. The paper makes a case for and against itinerant bookselling in Ghana. First, the paper raises issues with the quality and content of some of the reading materials peddled by the itinerant booksellers and discusses their implications for copyright and book development. The paper then argues that in spite of their shortcomings, itinerant booksellers have the potential to assist in finding a lasting solution to the book distribution problems of the country, and, need to be encouraged and assisted by book industry players such as the Ghana Development Council, Ghana Book Publishers Association, and the Ghana Booksellers Association to contribute meaningfully to Ghana??s book business.     

A social media strategy for academic libraries

This study was carried out to analyse strategies regarding the use of social media for academic library services in Ghana. The research design was quantitative and adopted the survey approach. Questionnaires served as the main data collection instrument. The study population comprised of one hundred and ten library staff from public and private universities in Ghana. As indicated by the study results, the library staff agreed that there was a need for a well-formulated social media strategy to help academic libraries identify the most appropriate social media tools, establish contact with targeted audience, and increase engagement rates to enable an effective and efficient distribution of its resources and services. The results also indicated that the academic libraries, however, seem to neglect these strategies which could drive patrons' use of such platforms. Recommendations therefore suggest the need to implement social media plans and policies, user engagement, social media update, and dedicated staff with the requisite skills in the use of social media platforms for library services delivery.     

Information on the Go: Perspective of Academic Librarians on Use of Social Media in Reference Services

Librarians have different perceptions on the employment of social media in library services. This research focused on investigating the perceptions that academic librarians in Ghana hold about the employment of social media in providing reference and user services. A quantitative research approach employing a Likert-type questionnaire was used in soliciting the views of 99 librarians from six top public and private universities in Ghana on their perspective on the use of social media in providing reference and user services. The findings of the study indicate mixed perceptions on the application of social media in reference and user services. These are variously attributed to lack of skills on the part of librarians to use social media, low bandwidth and poor internet connectivity, and inadequate support/motivation from parent institutions among others. As a result, librarians found the traditional mode of service delivery more comfortable, though they knew the importance of social media in their services. The study recommended, among others, development of skills and sensitization workshops to whip up interest in librarians to use social media in reference and user services.     

“You Lie!” Identity,Paper, and the Materiality of Information

This article uses the problems associated with citizenship verification in U.S. government health insurance programs to argue that paper needs to be analyzed as a media technology. To examine paper as a media technology is to ask, “How does paper work?” and “What are the rules and habits that enable paper to be used in paperwork?” To consider paper as a media technology, this article makes 2 arguments. First, it argues that there is a set of skills and knowledge associated with paper documents that need to be recognized as a distinct form of literacy. Second, this article argues that the relation between paper and identity is an argument about the materiality of information. In focusing on how paper facilitates the materialization of information, this case study illustrates how distinct practices of use create specific relationships between technology and information that give information a distinct functional presence.     

新媒介环境下创新高校图书馆空间服务研究

从服务理念、服务方式等方面分析了新媒介对高校图书馆空间服务的影响,提出应对新媒介发展、创新高校图书馆空间服务应采取的举措;认为空间再造、空间拓展等多元化服务,是图书馆为用户提供学习和生活新体验的转型之路.     

“Amoral universalism”: mediating and staging global and local in the 1998 Nagano Olympic Winter Games

This paper is a case study that critically analyzes the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games. The Olympics are a gigantic global event, largely as a result of significant global media attention, particularly through television and corporate sponsors. However, these entities simultaneously need a specific locale in which to operate. Analytically, the paper focuses on interactions between the global media actors and the host city and its people. It argues that the commercialized nature of the Olympic Games controls not only the program, but also numerous aspects of the local host city to maximize benefit for the media. This paper reviews how historically and structurally the media were able to obtain such extensive control. Then, it argues how the media actually control the locale through the initial bid, the process of preparation, the Games, and even the aftermath.     

Media and the Imaginary in History

This paper discusses how media theory and history should approach specimens of evidence about the cultural reception of media pertaining to the realms of the fantastic, such as speculations, predictions, dreams, and other forms of fantasy regarding media. It argues that the role of the imaginary in the history of media can be fully comprehended only by employing a perspective which is dynamic in time. In different phases of a medium's evolution, in fact, we find different fantasies; it follows that we need specific approaches to study them. The article discusses fantasies which are specific to three stages in media change: those preceding the actual invention of a medium; those accompanying the earliest period after the introduction of a new medium; and those connected to old media.     

NEWS STORIES

Through focus groups with four self-described “independent” college student newspapers, this study provides a new perspective on how to view student media independence. Choices student journalists make concerning sourcing, funding, location and guidance may contribute to the newspaper's level of independence more than how much an institution attempts to control the student media. Expressed invitations by student journalists to non-students and faculty in guiding editorial content and by using university resources to produce a newspaper, such as Internet access, relinquishes the students' control to the university and other non-students.     

Politicians as Media Producers

The emergence of social media raises new questions concerning the relationship between journalists and politicians and between news media and politics. The increasingly complex media milieu, in which the boundaries between media producers and audiences become partly dissolved, calls for new theoretical approaches in the study of journalism. This article reassesses central theoretical arguments about the relationship between journalism, sources, politics and democracy. Drawing on a pilot study of the printed press, it explores the increased social media use among politicians in Sweden and its implications for political journalism. The article suggests that power relations between journalism and politics can be fruitfully explored from the perspective of mediatized interdependency, a perspective that acknowledges that journalists and politicians have become both actors and sources through mutual interaction in online spaces. Furthermore, it argues that social media use has expanded journalism's interest in the private life of politicians, thereby contributing to a de-politicization of politics.     

The Influence of Religiosity and Ethnic Identification on Media Use Among Muslims and Non-Muslims in France and Britain

This is an examination of the ethnic media use of French and British Muslims. A total of 677 Muslims participated in the study. Analysis reveals being an immigrant or a native of a nation does not significantly influence ethnic media use in France but does in Britain. Ethnic identification was also revealed as an influential predictor of ethnic media use among Muslims in France but not in Britain. Religiosity significantly predicted ethnic media use among British Muslims. The article argues religiosity and ethnic identification should be included in studies examining media use among ethnic groups.     

Children and Media: On Growth and Gaps

This essay argues that there is far too little research on the effects of new types of media programming and formats on children. In fact, the gap between the research base and production and policy issues appears to be widening. The essay advocates use of the developmental research model to study media effects on children. More specifically, researchers should focus more on the neuropsychological effects of format characteristics and viewing styles of children.     

穷人、富人和传媒正义——解读新闻生产中的平民主义策略

在社会救助机制不完善的情况下,传媒的越界评判和敦请成为一种“合法的”补偿机制。本文认为,传媒的越界行为得以存在主要原因,在于新闻生产过程中所使用的平民主义话语策略,调动并契合了转型时期中国民众的社会心理。传媒在激烈的竞争中获得某种市场和道德的双重默许。     

Punditry as a reward system: audience construction and the logics of the punditry sphere

The article explores the relationship between the punditry sphere and democracy by analyzing how pundits and media organizations think about their audience. It also examines the role of punditry in the political environment in which the media organizations operate. Using Portugal as an example, the study draws on data gathered from interviews with pundits, journalists and news editors. Findings suggest that pundits and media organizations construct a punditry sphere that revolves around the circles of power. The article argues that this conception of the punditry sphere reflects the reward system under which pundits and media organizations work. Punditry seems to be a field primarily oriented to pundits themselves and to managing their stakes in the public arena while operating as a sphere where media organizations rework their relations with and within established powers, where politicians hold a special place. This construction reflects the co-dependence between media organizations and circles of power in Portugal and offers organizational-structural understanding of the logics of the punditry sphere and the role pundits play in public communication.     

The Strategic Challenge of Continuous Change in Multi-Platform Media Organizations—A Strategy-as-Practice Perspective

This article focuses on the complexities of managing multi-platform strategies in the complex and highly dynamic environments of contemporary media markets. Based on a comparative case study of two Nordic media organizations, the article identifies and articulates two sets of practices through which strategy is managed in the continuously changing print and online environments. While the practices that guide strategy development of print publishing tend to be content driven, brand constrained, commercially steered, and top-down monitored, strategizing for online platforms tends to be more technology driven, brand inspired, interactive, and entrepreneurial. For multi-platform media organizations this type of situation is challenging because the incremental and radical innovations that they pursue are platform specific, instead of aiming at exploitation and exploration on both platforms. To succeed in the market, the article argues, multi-platform media organizations need to develop strategies and organizational practices that allow them to be truly ambidextrous—to pursue both incremental and radical change—on all platforms.     

Wallowing in Media Past: Media-Induced Nostalgia’s Connection to Parasocial Relationships

This article elaborates on media-induced nostalgia as a mixed emotion elicited by remembering past media content and characters. It argues that social components of media consumption such as parasocial relationships (PSRs) play an important part in the elicitation of nostalgia. In an online study, participants (N = 96) remembered their individual media use and preferred media characters as children. Results show that media-induced nostalgia is significantly associated with PSRs to characters in the past. These findings are evaluated concerning their implications for future research on nostalgia and PSRs.     

鲍德里亚的后现代传媒理论与媒介现实的构建

鲍德里亚是当代著名后现代思想家,他的理论深刻地影响了文化理论以及有关当代媒体、艺术和社会话语。①鲍德里亚立足于批判的视角,对以电子媒体为技术特征的媒体社会和相关的消费社会提出了独特的后现代主义理论。本文通过对其后现代主义媒介理论的扼要分析,对鲍德里亚激进理论所蕴涵的虚无主义倾向提出质疑,并进一步思考后现代主义媒介理论对传媒多元化、民主化、服务公众等重大课题的影响。     

Perspectives on Sentiment Analysis

One of the consequences of the widespread use of social media is the equally widespread availability of all sorts of once intimate and private stuff: textual, visual, and affective. From this, a new form of labor arises: the mining of social media data. One type of social media data mining is sentiment analysis, the application of a range of technologies to determine sentiments expressed within social media about particular topics. This article maps out a range of emerging perspectives on sentiment analysis and argues that these sometimes-competing views need to be brought together, so that analyses of new socio-technical phenomena like sentiment analysis can be rich and rounded.     

Social media monitoring: Responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance?

Social media monitoring is gradually becoming a common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. The main purposes of social media monitoring are strategic control and responsiveness. Social media monitoring poses normative questions in terms of transparency, accountability and privacy. We investigate practices of social media monitoring in four Dutch public organizations. Policy departments seem to be more strongly orientated towards monitoring, whereas organizations involved in policy implementation seem to be more inclined to progress to webcare. The paper argues for more transparency on social media monitoring.     

The year’s work in international librarianship: 1969

The paper sets out to determine the social origins and professional status of librarians in Ghana with a view to understanding them as a professional group of working individuals. It examines the personal characteristics such as age, sex and marital status of the librarians. Parental influences on the choice of profession, as well as the status of individual librarians in their organizations and institutions are investigated. The results of this study indicate that most librarians in Ghana come from working class homes and that librarians in Ghana are satisfied with their status in their organizations and institutions.     

Balancing Tensions During Convergence: Duality Management in a Newspaper Company

Abstract

Media companies inherently face organizational tensions, as dual—artistic and commercial—orientations are part of their mission. Yet, it is still poorly understood what the existence of such tensions implies for managing media companies that undergo organizational changes to embrace technological convergence. Based on a case study with a European media company, this article argues that different organizational tensions exist and exemplifies this by characterizing structural, processual, and cultural tensions. This study finds that these tensions are interlinked, interdependent, and dynamic—namely, when media companies change, their inherent tensions are also likely to change. Thus, they need to be actively and comprehensively managed to avoid disfunctionalities. In fact, considering the different tensions in the reorganizing process might enhance its chances of success. Relocating the tension, enhancing perception of the tension, and providing training to increase awareness of employees emerge from this case as different strategies for managing tensions.