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Information pollution poses a significant threat to democracy worldwide, and Mexico provides a critical case study of this growing problem. This study presents and applies a holistic analytical framework to detect the enabling and driving factors of information pollution, investigating its impact on democratic quality during the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024). Drawing on 20 expert interviews, findings reveal that structural socio-economic inequalities, weak institutional transparency, and media concentration indirectly enabled information pollution, while divisive populist rhetoric and a post-factual political style directly drove its rise. These dynamics contributed to affective polarisation, eroded trust in democratic institutions, and reduced press freedom. The study concludes that combating information pollution requires legal reforms, media literacy initiatives, and enhanced transparency. By focusing on a non-English speaking, deficient democracy, the study broadens the empirical base of understanding disinformation’s role in the global wave of autocratisation.

This new report provides a framework within which to assess compliance with core international labor standards and succeeds in taking an enormous step toward interpreting all relevant information into one central database. At the request of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Research Council's Committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards was charged with identifying relevant and useful sources of country-level data, assessing the quality of such data, identifying innovative measures to monitor compliance, exploring the relationship between labor standards and human capital, and making recommendations on reporting procedures to monitor compliance. The result of the committee's work is in two parts-this report and a database structure. Together, they offer a first step toward the goal of providing an empirical foundation to monitor compliance with core labor standards. The report provides a comprehensive review of extant data sources, with emphasis on their relevance to defined labor standards, their utility to decision makers in charge of assessing or monitoring compliance, and the cautions necessary to understand and use the quantitative information.

In this third edition, The Global Public Relations Handbook: Theory, Research, and Practice offers state-of-the-art discussions of the global public relations industry, blending research-based theory with practice, and presented in essays from both academics and practitioners. This edition's 28 essays in three sections take into account changes in the global communication landscape especially in the last ten years. The first section contains essays that provide conceptual linkages between public relations and international political systems, economic systems and levels of development, societal culture, different media systems including digital media, and activism. Essays in the second section discuss the communication of various global actors such as corporations (including family-owned enterprises), non-profits, governments (and public sector enterprises), global public relations agencies, IGOs such as the European Union and NATO and \"informal\" organizations such as hactivist groups, terrorists, and failed states. The third section discusses key global communication issues such as climate change, character assassination as a communication tool, internal communication, risk and crisis communication, public affairs, and public diplomacy. This will be an essential resource for students and researchers of public relations, strategic communication, and international communication.

In the past ten years, elections were held in six countries of Central Africa experiencing “post-conflict” situations. The polls that took place in Burundi (2005), the Central African Republic (2005), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2006), Congo-Brazzaville (2002, 2007), Chad (1996, 2001, 2006) and Rwanda (2003) were crucial for peace-building. In some cases, they were widely supported and supervised by the international community, being considered the last step of a peace process and the first step toward establishing a truly representative “post-conflict” regime. The media were expected to play a large part in supporting these elections, both to inform the citizens, so they could make an educated choice, and to supervise the way the electoral administration was organizing the polls. This paper attempts to show the many challenges faced by the media while covering these post-conflict electoral processes. In a context of great political tension, in which candidates are often former belligerents who have just put down their guns to go to the polls, the media operate in an unsafe and economically damaged environment, suffering from a lack of infrastructure, inadequate equipment and untrained staff. Given those constraints, one might wonder if the media should be considered actual democratic tools in Central Africa or just gimmicks in a “peace-building kit” (including “free and fair” elections, multipartism and freedom of the press) with no real impact on the democratic commitment of the elite or the political participation of the population.

In the past ten years, elections were held in six countries of Central Africa experiencing “post-conflict” situations. The polls that took place in Burundi (2005), the Central African Republic (2005), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2006), Congo-Brazzaville (2002, 2007), Chad (1996, 2001, 2006) and Rwanda (2003) were crucial for peace-building. In some cases, they were widely supported and supervised by the international community, being considered the last step of a peace process and the first step toward establishing a truly representative “post-conflict” regime. The media were expected to play a large part in supporting these elections, both to inform the citizens, so they could make an educated choice, and to supervise the way the electoral administration was organizing the polls. This paper attempts to show the many challenges faced by the media while covering these post-conflict electoral processes. In a context of great political tension, in which candidates are often former belligerents who have just put down their guns to go to the polls, the media operate in an unsafe and economically damaged environment, suffering from a lack of infrastructure, inadequate equipment and untrained staff. Given those constraints, one might wonder if the media should be considered actual democratic tools in Central Africa or just gimmicks in a “peace-building kit” (including “free and fair” elections, multipartism and freedom of the press) with no real impact on the democratic commitment of the elite or the political participation of the population.In den letzten zehn Jahren wurden in sechs zentralafrikanischen Ländern, die sich in einer Post-Konflikt-Phase befanden, Wahlen abgehalten. Die Wahlgänge in Burundi (2005), der Zentralafrikanischen Republik (2005), der Demokratischen Republik Kongo (2006), Kongo-Brazzaville (2002, 2007), dem Tschad (1996, 2001, 2006) und Ruanda (2003) waren entscheidend für die Friedenskonsolidierung. Einige dieser Wahlen wurden von der internationalen Gemeinschaft umfassend unterstützt und überwacht, denn sie wurden als letzte Stufe des Friedensprozesses und erster Schritt hin zu einer repräsentativen politischen Ordnung angesehen. Den Medien wurde eine wichtige Rolle zur Unterstützung dieser Wahlen zugeschrieben, sowohl in Bezug auf die Information der Bürger, damit diese eine auf Kenntnissen beruhende Entscheidung treffen könnten, als auch auf die Überwachung der Organisation der Wahlen durch die Verwaltung. Dieser Beitrag versucht, die vielen Herausforderungen zu zeigen, denen sich die Medien bei der Wahlberichterstattung ausgesetzt sahen. In einer Situation starker politischer Spannung, in der die Kandidaten häufig ehemalige Kriegsteilnehmer sind, die ihre Waffen nur für den Wahlgang niedergelegt haben, operieren die Medien in einem Umfeld, das durch Unsicherheit und wirtschaftliche Zerstörung gekennzeichnet ist. Ihre Arbeit leidet unter der mangelhaften Infrastruktur, ihrer ungenügenden Ausrüstung und nicht ausreichend qualifizierten Mitarbeitern. Angesichts dieser Unzulänglichkeiten ist fraglich, ob die Medien in Zentralafrika wirklich als Instrumente der Demokratisierung angesehen werden können oder (wie auch „freie und faire“ Wahlen, Mehrparteiensystem und Pressefreiheit) eher als ein Element aus dem „Peacebuilding-Bau-satz“ ohne wirkliche Bedeutung für die demokratische Einstellung der Elite oder die politische Partizipation der Bevölkerung.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been a remarkable success in Africa. Across the continent, the availability and quality of service have gone up and the cost has gone down. In just 10 years dating from the end of the 1990s mobile network coverage rose from 16 percent to 90 percent of the urban population; by 2009, rural coverage stood at just under 50 percent of the population. Although the performance of Africa's mobile networks over the past decade has been remarkable, the telecommunications sector in the rest of the world has also evolved rapidly. Many countries now regard broadband Internet as central to their long-term economic development strategies, and many companies realize that the use of ICT is the key to maintaining profitability. This book is about that challenge and others. Chapters two and three describe the recent history of the telecommunications market in Africa; they cover such issues as prices, access, the performance of the networks, and the regulatory reforms that have triggered much of the investment. This part of the book compares network performance across the region and tries to explain why some countries have moved so much more quickly than others in providing affordable telecommunications services. Chapter four explores the financial side of the telecommunications revolution in Africa and details how the massive investments have been financed and which companies have most influenced the sector. Chapter five deals with the future of the sector. The final chapter synthesizes the main chapters of the book and presents policy recommendations intended to drive the sector forward.

This report tries to put boundaries around the abstraction that is \"social inclusion\". It is intended for policy makers, academics, activists and development partners – indeed anyone who is curious about how to address inclusion in a world that is witness to intense demographic, spatial, economic and technological transitions. Placing the discussion of social inclusion within such global transitions and transformations, it argues that social inclusion is an evolving agenda. While it does not purport to provide definitive answers as to how to achieve social inclusion in any given context, the report offers an easy-to-use definition and a framework to assist practitioners in asking, outlining and developing some of the right questions that can help advance the agenda of inclusion in different contexts. There are seven main messages in this report: 1. Excluded groups exist in all countries. 2. Excluded groups are consistently denied opportunities. 3. Intense global transitions are leading to social transformations that create new opportunities for inclusion as well as exacerbating existing forms of exclusion. 4. People take part in society through markets, services, and spaces. 5. Social and economic transformations affect the attitudes and perceptions of people. As people act on the basis of how they feel, it is important to pay attention to their attitudes and perceptions. 6. Exclusion is not immutable. Abundant evidence demonstrates that social inclusion can be planned and achieved. 7. Moving ahead will require a broader and deeper knowledge of exclusion and its impacts as well as taking concerted action.

Changing markets are challenging governance. The growing scale, reach, complexity, and popular legitimacy of market institutions and market players are re-opening old questions about the role of the public sector and redefining what it means to govern well. This volume-the latest publication from the Visions of Governance in the 21st Century program at the Kennedy School of Government-explores the way evolving markets alter the pursuit of cherished public goals. John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. frame the inquiry with an essay on governing well in an age of ascendant markets. Other contributors (all from Harvard's Kennedy School unless otherwise indicated) address specific areas of market governance in individual chapters: Joseph P. Newhouse on the medical marketplace, Jose Gomez-Ibañez and John R. Meyer on transportation, William Hogan on electric power, Paul E. Peterson on K-12 education, L. Jean Camp on information networks, Akash Deep and Guido Schaefer (Vienna University of Economics & Business Administration) on federal deposit insurance, Frederick Schauer on \"the marketplace of ideas,\" Anna Greenberg on the \"marketization\" of politics, David M. Hart on the politics of high-tech industry, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger on information law, John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser on the challenges posed by fast-changing markets, and Mark Moore on the spread of market ideology.

By all measures, poverty in Africa as a whole has increased and deepened. But in fact, Africa contains a number of undocumented success stories of poverty reduction. This book presents case studies of thirteen of these success stories, giving grounds for some real hope, and providing useful learning for all ? policymakers, governments, businesses, service providers, NGOs, and donors.