"Outside of the occasional inclusion of a handful of prominent South African media cases, African journalism is generally under-represented in studies of journalism practice and safety. Community media in Africa is even more neglected, and is often omitted entirely from consideration despite the presence of (quite literally) thousands of grassroots radio stations, newspapers and blogs, in hundreds of languages across the continent. When we understand plurality and diversity as being key features of a free media landscape, the role of community journalism becomes even more significant. Although the baseline survey presented here is intended only as a first step in building moredata about African journalism practice, in all its diversity, the responses reveal a number of immediate insights that are worrying – but also potentially helpful in efforts to improve mediasafety, and work towards greater media freedom.
Current journalism studies are not capturing diversity in African media: Many surveys of African journalism still only focus on English-language news, or digital news sources (both primarily choices that are made for convenience rather than for representation). This approach excludes a multiplicity of journalism that is being produced in other languages, and particularly ignores an extremely rich ecosystem of community broadcast media.
The focus on digital safety privileges one type of journalism: With the rapid growth of social media platforms, a large proportion of journalism-safety studies have focused on profiles and responses to digital threats and harassment of reporters online. While this remains a serious location for potential risk and harm, this survey of African journalists suggests that, for local and community reporters, digital threats are less of a problem than face to-face acts of intimidation.
Community media often report on war and conflict, but are not considered war reporters: Local and regional conflicts should be mapped against local and community journalism outlets or platforms, and greater assistance or support for safer reporting in conflict conditions should be provided to journalists in conflict zones." (Discussion, page 12)