This volume explores the sameness and difference between the United States and France in the matters of freedom of expression on the Internet. The United States and France are liberal democracies that are part of the Western family of nations. However, despite their many similarities, they have a number of cultural and ideological differences. The United States is generally France’s ally in time of war and its cultural nemesis in time of peace. One of the reasons for this unusual relationship is that the United States and France are self-described “exceptional” countries. The United States and France are therefore two Western countries separated by different exceptionalist logics. Lyombe Eko uses this concept of exceptionalism as a theoretical framework for the analysis of American and French resolution of problems of human rights and freedom of expression in the traditional media and on the Internet. This book therefore analyzes how each county applies rules and regulations designed to manage a number of issues of media communication in real space, to the realities and specificities of cyberspace, within the framework of their respective exceptionalist logics. The fundamental question addressed concerns what happens when rules and regulations designed to regulate the media in clearly defined, national and regional geographic spaces, are suddenly confronted with the new realities and multi-communication platforms of the interconnected virtual sphere of cyberspace.

Over the last five years, widespread concern about the effects of social media on democracy has led to an explosion in research from different disciplines and corners of academia. This book is the first of its kind to take stock of this emerging multi-disciplinary field by synthesizing what we know, identifying what we do not know and obstacles to future research, and charting a course for the future inquiry. Chapters by leading scholars cover major topics – from disinformation to hate speech to political advertising – and situate recent developments in the context of key policy questions. In addition, the book canvasses existing reform proposals in order to address widely perceived threats that social media poses to democracy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.

This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.

The processes of convergence and digitalization have altered the technological conditions in which the press operates. More than that, they have altered the environment in which the press stakes its claim to freedom and strives to protect its turf from other media players. The advent of internet-based services and applications has blurred the technological boundaries between the press, broadcasting, and telecommunications, challenging their regulatory silos. Press Freedom and Regulation in a Digital Era: A Comparative Study assesses the extent to which the emergent regulatory model for online news media is shaped by analogies from the past, or rather by a newly prevalent culture of control. By interweaving two distinct strands of analysis - the concepts of press freedom and regulation, and the phenomena of convergence and digitalization - this book examines the key implications of digitalization and assesses the challenges for press freedom in the nascent digital news ecosystem. Drawing upon decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), as well as from cases in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, this comparative work comprehensively explores the regulation of the press in the digital era and the impact of the proliferating media laws, policies, and jurisprudence on press freedom. Irini Katsirea identifies the regulatory ruptures that persist and makes concrete and timely recommendations for the evolving online news ecosystem.

Mitte März 2018 skandalisierten Medien die Datenberatungsfirma Cambridge Analytica und den Milliardenkonzern Facebook wegen fragwürdiger Methoden, die während der Brexit-Kampagne und des US-Wahlkampfs 2016 Anwendung fanden. Die Affäre um die beiden Unternehmen machte deutlich, dass viele Skandalfälle nicht an Ländergrenzen Halt machen und je nach kulturellem Hintergrund unterschiedlich beurteilt werden. "Scandalogy 2: Cultures of Scandals – Scandals in Culture" vereint aktuellste Forschungsergebnisse internationaler Forscher zum Themenfeld "Skandale". Ein besonderer Fokus liegt dabei auf der Skandalberichterstattung, etwa durch eine Langzeitstudie in Großbritannien oder durch eine Analyse der Berichterstattung über Spionage im Kalten Krieg in den USA. Andere Beiträge widmen sich Online-Skandalisierungformen wie dem sogenannten "Shit Storm". Der Sammelband richtet sich an Forscher und Studenten, insbesondere in den Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaften, der Politikwissenschaft und Soziologie. Die Befunde sind außerdem für Berufspraktiker, vor allem für PR-Berater, Pressesprecher und Krisenkommunikationsexperten, von hohem Interesse.

The Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack of January 7, 2015 shook French journalism to the core and reverberated around the world, triggering a cascade of responses from journalists, media outlets, cartoonists and caricaturists from diverse geographies of freedom of expression and journalistic cultures. This book is a multifaceted case study that describes and explains sameness and difference in diverse journalistic conceptualizations of the Charlie Hebdo affair from a comparative, international perspective. It explores how different journalistic traditions, cultures, worldviews and styles conceptualized and reacted to the clash between freedom of expression and respect for religious sentiments in the context of terrorism, where those sentiments are imposed on the media and secular societies through intimidation, coercion and violence. The book analyzes the political and cultural clashes between the core human right of freedom of expression, and rite of respect for religious sentiments, which is situated on the outer periphery of the human right of freedom of religion. It also examines how media outlets, editors, and cartoonists from different politico-cultural contexts and journalistic cultures in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America, addressed the delicate issue of Mohammed cartoons in general, and the problem of (re)publication of the controversial Charlie Hebdo Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon, in particular.