Publications

This timely volume reviews key issues and developments in the controversial area of public sector information (PSI). It addresses the fundamental themes, challenges and conflicts surrounding the access to, and use of, PSI in the new digital era. Using detailed empirical analyses and case studies from across Europe and the USA, the authors focus on the crucial policy, economic, legal and social issues.

Migrants and ethnic minorities form a growing part of the population of Europe. They often have higher than average exposure to health risks, while facing barriers to accessing appropriate health care. International bodies have called for policy measures to tackle these inequities.

Weather radars provide a prompt overview of falling precipitation over large areas and are therefore of great interest to the hydrological community. The COST Action 717 “Use of radar observation in hydrological and NWP models” considerably facilitated communication among experts of radar meteorology, numerical weather prediction (NWP) and hydrology. The working Group 1 (WG1) of COST Action 717 dealt with the use of weather radar in hydrological modelling and one of its tasks was to set up a summary of the current methods for radar-based quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE).

The objective of this report is to specify the scope of the “European Network for long-term Forest Ecosystem and Landscape Research” (ENFORS) – COST Action E25. Although the general aims have already been presented in the “Technical Annex of the Memorandum of Understanding” it was considered necessary to create a more detailed framework, in association with the member countries. This framework will be used to direct national inventories of existing field research facilities, and it will also function as a common guideline for the future development of the Action.

This special issue takes on the challenge to combine historical research with the study of participatory media, and participation in/through the media. The attention spent on the notion of participation has oscillated over time and within different academic disciplines and societal fields. In recent years, we can see a hopeful celebration of the capacities on online technologies to facilitate (or even embody) participatory practices. Reflections on these ‘new’ technologies in many cases have led to formulations of strong claims to novelty and uniqueness, in combination with processes of amnesia in relation to the societal roles of old media technologies. As Ekström et al. (2011: 4) write: “by overstating the newness of participatory media, the history of audience activity [and media participation] is made invisible and the present elusively vague.” Apart from the need for historical research for its own sake, and the need to show the complexities and differences over time by going back to periods “when old technologies where new” – to quote Marvin’s (1988) book title – historical research is also very necessary to compensate for the mythologies of novelty that characterize contemporary reflections about ‘new’ – or better: online – media. Today’s digital media landscape is of course in constant evolution, and it is important to understand how its patterns of development, not least in regard to its political economy, technical architecture, and socio-cultural usage, embody built-in contingencies that both engender and delimit its efficacy for democratic participation. This special issue contains 6 articles that, each in their own ways, demonstrate the complexities, fluidities and limitations of specific participatory practices, located in the past and present, and the interconnections between different societal fields, such as the technological, the cultural, the political and the journalistic.

Table of Contents

Histories of media(ted) participation: An introduction (p. 7–14)

Nico Carpentier, Peter Dahlgren

Fighting for a regime change through active listening (p. 15–34)

Nelson Ribeiro

For an archeology of online participatory literary writing: Hypertext and hyperfiction (p. 35–54)

Francesca Pasquali

Wrong turns towards revolution? Grassroots media and political participation in Italy (1967-2012) (p. 55–78)

Fausto Colombo

Propaganda, critical media literacy and participation: Tracing memories of the Soviet media (p. 79–104)

Natalija Mažeikiene, Kristina Juraite

The tales of the three digital cities of Amsterdam: The application of ICT for social and political participation (p. 105–130)

Dennis Beckers, Peter van den Besselaar

Historicising the journalist–audience relationships in the internet era: A case study of the Slovenian newspaper Delo (p. 131–156)

Igor Vobic