The broad field of environmental ethics, animal welfare, animal liberation, and animal rights literature indicate that all encounters between humans and animals are ethically charged. In this article, I shall examine how environmental ethics or animal welfare/rights/liberation literature translate into public media. The case study will delve into the representation of animals in the Dutch newspapers, using content analysis to provide an empirical basis for monitoring public opinion. Assuming that attitudes to animals are influenced by media coverage, the results of this case study will be brought to bear upon the discussion of the representation of animals beyond a specific national context. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
Studying images in social media poses specific methodological challenges, which in turn have directed scholarly attention toward the computational interpretation of visual data. When analyzing large numbers of images, both traditional content analysis as well as cultural analytics have proven valuable. However, these techniques do not take into account the contextualization of images within a socio-technical environment. As the meaning of social media images is co-created by online publics, bound through networked practices, these visuals should be analyzed on the level of their networked contextualization. Although machine vision is increasingly adept at recognizing faces and features, its performance in grasping the meaning of social media images remains limited. Combining automated analyses of images with platform data opens up the possibility to study images in the context of their resonance within and across online discursive spaces. This article explores the capacities of hashtags and retweet counts to complement the automated assessment of social media images, doing justice to both the visual elements of an image and the contextual elements encoded through the hashtag practices of networked publics.
All social media should have a sticker saying 'Don't Jump for the Tool!' While it is tempting 'to use Twitter', the choice of a medium like Twitter cannot be seen in isolation of strategic goals, instruments and expected results, i.e. a communication strategy. We designed a board game, called the Media Strategy Game, which makes professionals aware of the choices and opportunities involved in developing a communication strategy. By playing the game, assumptions about objectives and results are made explicit and awareness is created for the activities needed to achieve objectives. The game therefore serves to stimulate discussions, provides insights for the development of an efficient media policy, and helps to create consensus. While designed for professionals who need to communicate a message inside or outside of an organization, it has also proved very valuable in trainings and in higher education. Recently a workbook has been added to the board game that helps professionals to formulate their communication strategy by providing 16 hands-on models for business strategy, business modelling, leveraging tools and formulating indicators to measure impact.
