edithhopegardenjournal

N ational and international media development and aid programs often embrace the objective of developing independent media as a means of promoting democratic development.  They do so in hopes of reducing political power over media, but fail to acknowledge that all media and communication infrastructures are systemically influenced by economic and social, as well as political power. And they often seem to ignore the reality that the history and cultures of nation states affect how that power is exercised. Media systems and their content, and the degree of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, are reflections of the alignment of the dominant cultural elements in society. Even in the West, most notably within European Union and Council of Europe governing institutions, efforts to promote media independence are gaining significant support—particularly when applied to m edia in Central and Eastern Europe. The term media independence is often used naively and imprecisely, cons...

Twitter is one of the best known social media services, but it is suffering from its inability to provide sufficient value to consumers, advertisers, and investors. The firm has 316 million users, a respectable figure—but 80% smaller than Facebook. Its share price has dropped below the level set when it became a publicly traded company in 2013. The company has lost about $30 billion in market value in the past two years and is now valued at $15 billion. It continues to experience negative operating and profit margins and negative return on assets, despite about $2 billion in revenue. Twitter is suffering from two fundamental business problems. First, the lack of an effective value proposition that makes it attractive to larger numbers of users. Second, lack of vision and direction. The latter led to the departure of its CEO in June 2015 and he has still not been replaced. A significant value problem for Twitter has been that it is primarily configured for short, one-way communicati...