Browsing by Author "Hanska Ahy, Maximillian"

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    How the ubiquity of eyewitness media changes the mediation and visibility of protests in the news
    (Routledge, 2018-07-20) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian; Bode, Mike
    This chapter examines how eyewitness footage travels from the street, through verification procedures in newsrooms, or diffusion on social media until it reaches our screens, and whether its ubiquity, the fact it is now systematically collected, processed and authenticated by newsrooms, has changed the mediation and visibility of protests. It argues that eyewitness footage is polysemic and polyvalent, because it is easily stripped of the context of its original upload, to appear in different contexts, with different descriptions, advancing different interpretation of events and different political goals. Eyewitness media of protests complicates journalism’s task of providing a trusted record of the present.
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    The Indignados in the European Press: Beyond the Protest Paradigm
    (Routledge, 2017-12) Kyriakidou, Maria; Olivas Osuna, Jose Javier; Hanska Ahy, Maximillian
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    International journalism and the emergence of transnational publics: Between cosmopolitan norms, the affirmation of identity, and market forces
    (SAGE, 2018-03-04) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian
    Much has been written about transnational public spheres, though our understanding of their shape and nature remains limited. Drawing on three alternative conceptions of newswork as public communication, this paper explores the role of international journalists in shaping transnational publics. Based on a series of original interviews, it asks how journalists are oriented in their newswork (e.g. are they cosmopolitan or parochial in their orientation), and how they ‘imagine’ the public. It finds that interviewees imagine a polycentric transnational public, and variously frame their work as giving voice to those affected by an issue (imagining the public as a cosmopolitan community of fate), performing and reaffirming a particular kind of identity and belonging (imagining the public as a nation), or pursuing audiences wherever they may be (imagining the public as the de facto audience).
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    Journalism Between Cultures: Ethical Ideologies and the challenges of international broadcasting into Iran
    (Zadar Sveuciliste u Zagrebu, 2011) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian
    Drawing on interview data from research with Persian language international broadcasters (IBs), this paper asks which ethical ideologies journalists draw on when their work is dislocated between contexts? IBs are both spatially displaced from, and often operate within a journalism culture that is extraneous to the traditions of their audiences. Persian language IBs offer a salient example. Here, the pertinent question about differences in journalism culture and ethical ideology across contexts becomes one about dislocation between contexts. The challenges of dislocation are manifestations of the more general challenge of moving between universal principles and particularistic conditions. At stake are questions about the kind of ethical ideology that should inform journalism. Interpreting conversations with journalists, the analysis follows three directions of ethical ideologies, understood as rationales of journalistic decisions, in the newswork of IBs’ - a) relativist considerations of contextual particularities, b) means-oriented considerations of principles, and c) ends-oriented considerations of consequences. It finds all three orientations present within the newswork of Persian language IBs, suggesting that this diversity can be understood as a product of dislocation. Further, the paper argues that diversity in ethical ideologies challenges assumptions of internal coherence, raising the question whether an emphasis on coherence focuses attention on a false dichotomous choice between universal and particular. As a way forward this paper suggests a distinction between ethical ideologies as normative and pragmatic resources, and that a pragmatic focus has advantages when it comes to supplying global journalists with the resources most useful to doing their work.
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    Networked communication and the Arab Spring: Linking broadcast and social media
    (SAGE, 2014-06-05) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian
    A plethora of media platforms were involved in communicating recent protests across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), though it remains unclear exactly how these interacted. This qualitative article, based primarily on interviews with British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) newsworkers, explores the networked linkages between social and broadcast media, asking how social media content moved into broadcast news, which standards shaped the interface between the two and how these standards were defined. It finds that a set of normative and practical standards caused significant friction at the interface, which is reduced as content assimilates these standards. Standards are shaped mainly in response to broadcast imperatives, but also through the mainstreaming of social media and more efficacious and practicable networked communicative practices, indicating how power may shift in the networked age. Responding to the optimistic view that networked multimedia environments enable unencumbered communication, it argues that the scope and limits of communicative affordances depend on these standards.
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    Social Media & Journalism: Reporting the world through user generated content – an interview essay
    (COST Action ISO906 Transforming audiences, transforming societies: working group 2, 2013) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian; Wardle, Claire; Browne, Malachy
    Nowadays, social media are ubiquitous, offering many opportunities for people to share and access information, to create and distribute content, and to interact with more traditional media. For news organisations the social web has become an important platform for distributing content as well as a space where reporting and newsgathering takes place. This interview, with two news professionals who work exclusively on bringing social media content to broadcast news, explores some of the challenges and opportunities facing journalism as it moves into the digital age.
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    Social Media & the Arab Spring: How communication technology shapes socio-political change
    (Orient: German Journal for Politics, Economics and Culture of the Middle East, 2016-07) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian
    Although social media was not insignificant, we need to take a wider view examining the interac- tion between interpersonal communication, social media, and satellite TV to understand how the Arab Spring was documented and witnessed by local and global audiences, and how the protests were mobilised. Social media was a clearly important catalyst for the uprisings, but it may also ex- plain why the Arab Spring failed in the medium-term: Multimedia and multi-platform communica- tion environments, which facilitated the rapid diffusion of information, are good at supporting the kind of loose coordination necessary for defenestrating one system of authority. But they are not (yet) good at supporting the kind of deep and sustained coordination that designing and support- ing new political authority requires.
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    Technical Images and Visual Art in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: From GOFAI to GANs
    (ACM, 2019-10-23) Poltronieri, Fabrizio Augusto; Hanska Ahy, Maximillian
    Artificial Intelligence (AI) and art share a common past, where artists employed AI algorithms to generate art. This paper explores the early days of AI-generated images, using Harold Cohen’s AARON software as a paradigm of symbolic AI creative systems, and contextualizes the use of modern neural network technologies to create visual artworks. It discusses the methodologies and strategies used to make art using AI in the 1960s, comparing them to new AI algorithms. The discussion focuses on GOFAI (Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence) and GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) as the main technologies used in distinct historical periods to generate images. Vilém Flusser’s conception of technical images provides a conceptual framework for examining the qualities and attributes of AI-generated images.
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    #ThisIsACoup and Greece’s Bailout: Geo-mapping the emergence of a hashtag across Europe’s twittersphere
    (Routledge, 2018) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian; Bauchowitz, Stefan
    Social media allow disparate groups to spontaneously coordinate in support of a common cause. At the height of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis in 2015, as Greece was negotiating its third bailout and was about to be saddled with new austerity measures, the hashtag #ThisIsACoup emerged and quickly went viral on Twitter. How did it emerge, diffuse across Europe’s twittersphere, and with what impact on wider public discourse? This chapter uses data collected through Twitter’s streaming API and a qualitative content analysis to examine these questions. #ThisIsACoup first emerged in Spain. Within hours, people across Europe had coalesced around the hashtag, which succinctly expressed the shared sentiment that Greece was being treated unfairly. Moreover, the impact of #ThisIsACoup on public discourse reached well beyond social media, with over 700 newspaper stories worldwide mentioning the hashtag. But people did more than adopt a common hashtag. They engaged with other Twitter users across national boundaries, calling into being a transnational, pan-European communication space. Social media provided a potent means of connecting people from across Europe to voice their collective objection to controversial austerity policies. Through the hashtag, Twitter acted as a “stitching technology”, activating disparate, far-flung groups around a shared grievance.
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    Tweeting for Brexit: How social media influenced the Referendum
    (Abramis, 2017) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian; Bauchowitz, Stefan
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    Who's Reporting the Protests? Converging practices of citizen journalists and two BBC World Service newsrooms, from Iran's election protests to the Arab uprisings
    (Rutledge, 2013-02) Hanska Ahy, Maximillian; Shapour, Roxanna
    The 2009 protests in Iran and the 2011 Arab uprisings took place in complex and fast evolving media ecologies. The BBC's Persian and Arabic language services, which reach millions, drew heavily on content created by ordinary citizens to cover events. This paper traces the flow of this content through the news process to examine how collaboration between newsrooms and citizen journalists changed from 2009 to 2011. The article argues that participation in the news process hinges on the congruence between newsroom practices, and the practices of those producing content on the streets. Such congruence requires mutual knowledge of broadcasting requirements. It finds that by 2011 journalists felt more comfortable and effective integrating user-generated content (UGC) into their news output. Importantly, UGC creators appear to have taken on board the broadcaster's editorial requirements, making them savvier content creators.