Making Human Rights News: Balancing Participation and Professionalism

Making Human Rights News: Balancing Participation and Professionalism explores the impact of new digital technology and activism on the production of human rights messages. It is the first collection of studies to combine multidisciplinary approaches, "citizen witness" challenges to journalism ethics, and expert assessments of the "liberating role" of the Internet, addressing the following questions:

1. What can scholars from a wide range of disciplines – including communication studies, journalism, sociology, political science, and international relations/studies – add to traditional legal and political human rights discussions, exploring the impact of innovative digital information technologies on the gathering and dissemination of human rights news?

2. What questions about journalism ethics and professionalism arise as growing numbers of untrained "citizen witnesses" use modern mobile technology to document claims of human rights abuses?

3. What are the limits of the "liberating role" of the Internet in challenging traditional sources of authority and credibility, such as professional journalists and human rights professionals?

4. How do greater Internet access and human rights activism interact with variations in press freedom and government censorship worldwide to promote respect for different categories of human rights, such as women's rights and rights to health?

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights.

John C. Pollock (PhD, Stanford) is Professor of Communication Studies at The College of New Jersey. His most recent books include Tilted Mirrors: Media Alignment with Political and Social Change (2007), Media and Social Inequality: Innovations in Community Structure Research (2013), and Journalism and Human Rights: How Demographics Drive Media Coverage (2015). With special interests in media sociology and political communication, he conducts research on health communication and human rights.

Morton E. Winston (PhD, Illinois) is Professor of Philosophy at The College of New Jersey. His areas of specialization include human rights theory and practice, global ethics, and the philosophy of technology. His most recent books are On Chomsky (2001) and Society, Ethics, and Technology (2013). He served as Chairman of Amnesty International USA’s National Board of Directors and was the Distinguished Chair of Human Rights and International Relations at the Danish Institute of Human Rights.