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Media, Communication and the Struggle for Democratic Change: Case Studies on Contested Transitions

Katrin Voltmer, Christian Christensen, Irene Neverla, Nicole Stremlau, Barbara Thomass, Nebojsa Vladisavljevic, Herman Wasserman (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2019), xvii, 305 pp.

"This book investigates the role of media and communication in processes of democratization in different political and cultural contexts. Struggles for democratic change are periods of intense contest over the transformation of citizenship and the reconfiguration of political power. These democratiz ... more

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Media, Geopolitics, and Power: A View from the Global South

Herman Wasserman

Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2018), xvi, 217 pp.

"The end of apartheid brought South Africa into the global media environment. Outside companies invested in the nation's newspapers while South African conglomerates pursued lucrative tech ventures and communication markets around the world. Many observers viewed the rapid development of South Afric ... more

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How Influential Are Chinese Media in Africa? An Audience Analysis in Kenya and South Africa

Herman Wasserman, Dani Madrid-Morales

International Journal of Communication, volume 12 (2018), pp. 2212-2231

"This article uses data from seven focus groups with media and communication university students in Kenya and South Africa to explore the efficacy of Chinese-mediated public diplomacy. We show that Chinese media have little impact on students’ information habits, demonstrate that attitudes toward ... more

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How Influential are Chinese Media in Africa? An Audience Analysis in Kenya and South Africa

Herman Wasserman, Dani Madrid-Morales

International Journal of Communication, volume 12 (2018), pp. 2212-2231

"The increased presence of Chinese media in Africa has been the focus of much debate since the early 2010s. Discussions tend to revolve around issues of production and content, providing little evidence on the way audiences decode media messages aimed at extending China’s “soft power.” This ar ... more

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Chinese Media Engagement in South Africa

Dani Madrid-Morales, Herman Wasserman

Journalism Studies, volume 19, issue 8 (2018), pp. 1218-1235

"China’s footprint in Africa’s media sector over the last decade has reached dimensions that make it impossible to go unnoticed. In South Africa, one of the countries where this imprint is most diversified, Chinese media have been engaged in a varied range of activities, including content produc ... more

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Journalism and Foreign Aid in Africa

Chris Paterson, Audrey Gadzekpo, Herman Wasserman

African Journalism Studies, volume 39, issue 2 (2018), pp. 1-7

"The authors briefly survey the contemporary and complex relationship between aid and journalism and the role of foreign aid/development assistance in shaping African media systems. A call is made for greater research into the aid and journalism relationship and the impact these processes have on fo ... more

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The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa
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Bruce Mutsvairo (ed.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), xxix, 497 pp.

"This handbook attempts to fill the gap in empirical scholarship of media and communication research in Africa, from an Africanist perspective. The collection draws on expert knowledge of key media and communication scholars in Africa and the diaspora, offering a counter-narrative to existing Wester ... more

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Pathways to Media Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Reflections from a Regional Consultation
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Herman Wasserman, Nicholas Benequista

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2017), 25 pp.

"To ensure that African media organizations remain viable players in this changing political and economic landscape, new coalitions need to be built and existing ones strengthened. The existing coalitions in the region display certain weaknesses: they tend to be unevenly spread across the region and ... more

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Media and Citizenship: Between Marginalisation and Participation

Anthea Garman, Herman Wasserman (eds.)

Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press (2017), xi, 241 pp.

"Media and Citizenship challenges some assumptions about the relationship between the media and democracy in highly unequal societies like South Africa. In a post-apartheid society where an enfranchised majority is still unable to fundamentally practise their citizenship and experiences marginalisat ... more

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Questioning the Media-Democracy Link: South African Journalists’ Views

Wallace Chuma, Herman Wasserman, Tanja Bosch, Rebecca Pointer

African Journalism Studies, volume 38, issue 1 (2017), pp. 104-128

"It is often assumed that a robust, free and independent media will contribute to the deepening of democracy by keeping governments accountable and broadening citizen participation in deliberative democratic debates. But in new democracies such as South Africa, the deepening and broadening of democr ... more

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Everyday Media Culture in Africa: Audiences and Users

Wendy Willems, Winston Mano (eds.)

London: Routledge (2017), 260 pp.

"This volume examines the lived experiences of Africans and their interaction with different kinds of media: old and new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national, material and virtual. By offering a comparative, critical and largely qualitative account of audiences and users across ... a range of national contexts in different regions of Africa, the book examines media through the voices and perspectives of those engaging with it rather than reducing audiences and users to numbers and statistics, ready to be exploited as potential target markets or as political constituencies. The critical, qualitative research perspective adopted in this book enables us to gain a better understanding of how African viewers, listeners and users make sense of a range of media forms; what role these play in their everyday lives and what audience and user engagement can tell us about how citizens perceive the state, how they imagine themselves in the wider world and how they relate to each other. The book argues that the experiences of audiences and engagements of users with a range of media—newspapers, radio, television, magazines, internet, mobile phones, social media—are always grounded in particular contexts, worldviews and knowledge systems of life and wisdom: ‘It is akin to the tortoise. The tortoise never leaves its shell behind. It carries it wherever it goes’ (Chivaura 2006: 221). African media audiences and users carry their contexts and cultural repertoires in the same way a tortoise carries its shell. Thus far, the bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has addressed the policy and regulatory aspects as well as the relation between media institutions and the state (Willems 2014a). While studies on media, democratization and press freedom are invaluable, the ways in which ordinary people make sense of, and relate to, media in their everyday lives are largely left beyond consideration. As Barber (1997: 357) has pointed out, ‘[w]hat has not yet been sufficiently explored is the possibility that specific African audiences have distinctive, conventional modes and styles of making meaning, just as performers/speakers do. We need to ask how audiences do their work of interpretation’." (Page 4) more

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Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising"
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Mel Bunce, Suzanne Franks, Chris Paterson (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2017), xvii, 239 pp.

"Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media’s coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, esp ... more

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China's Media and Soft Power in Africa: Promotion and Perceptions
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Xiaoling Zhang, Herman Wasserman, Winston Mano (eds.)

New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2016), xii, 237 pp.

"This volume brings together scholars from different disciplines and nations to examine and assess the effectiveness of China's soft power initiatives in Africa. It throws light not only on China's engagement with Africa but also on how China's increasing influence is received in the African media." ... more

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Comparative Analysis of Civil Society, Media and Conflict

Rebecca Pointer, Tanja Bosch, Wallace Chuma, Herman Wasserman

Media, Conflict and Democratisation (MeCoDEM) (2016), 52 pp.

"This paper explores how Egyptian, Kenyan, Serbian and South African civil society organisations (CSOs) use communication and relationships with media to engage in democratic contestation. Individual interviews were conducted with 91 CSO members who participated in the various democratisation confli ... more

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Civil Society, Political Activism and Communications in Democratisation Conflicts: A Literature Review

Rebecca Pointer, Tanja Bosch, Wallace Chuma, Herman Wasserman

Media, Conflict and Democratisation (MeCoDEM) (2016), 35 pp.

"Given that the nature of civil society in different countries is different, and also often shifting in response to political changes, examining the relationship between civil society and media production (mainstream and alternative) in Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa involves being sensitive ... more

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Journalists in South Africa

Arnold S. De Beer, Sean Beckett, Vanessa Malila, Herman Wasserman

Worlds of Journalism Study (2016), 6 pp.

"With regard to professional role orientations, South African journalists found it most important to report things as they are (92.5%), to educate the audience (86.8%), and to let people express their views (84.6%). The relevance of these roles was fairly undisputed among the interviewed journalists ... more

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Binary Opposites – Can South African Journalists be Both Watchdogs and Developmental Journalists?

Arnold S. De Beer, Vanessa Malila, Sean Beckett, Herman Wasserman

Journal of African Media Studies, volume 8, issue 1 (2016), pp. 35-53

"This article challenges the traditional role ascribed by liberal and developmental media theory that journalists should either be watchdogs or developmental journalists but not both at the same time. As part of the South African leg of the Worlds of Journalism (WJS) project this article argues that ... more

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Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa: Mediating Conflict in the Twenty-First Century
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Winston Mano (ed.)

London: Tauris (2015), xviii,347 pp.

"In today's Africa racism and ethnicity have been implicated in serious conflicts - from Egypt to Mali to South Africa - that have cost lives and undermined efforts to achieve national cohesion and meaningful development. Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa sets about rethinking the role of me ... more

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Mapping BRICS Media

Kaarle Nordenstreng, Daya Kishan Thussu (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2015), xvii, 272 pp.

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The Variety of Platforms and Practices in African Journalism

Herman Wasserman (ed.)

African Journalism Studies, volume 35, issue 3 (2014), pp. 1-103

"Despite the generalizations and stereotypes that are often used to describe Africa in popular (and journalistic) discourses, the continent's diversity escapes easy categorization or glib narratives of either the 'Hopeless Continent' or 'Africa Rising' variety - the two poles between which the Econo ... more

The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa Top Insights

Pathways to Media Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Reflections from a Regional Consultation Top Insights

Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising" Top Insights

China's Media and Soft Power in Africa: Promotion and Perceptions Top Insights

Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa: Mediating Conflict in the Twenty-First Century Top Insights

The Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa
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Pathways to Media Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Reflections from a Regional Consultation
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Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century: From the "Heart of Darkness" to "Africa Rising"
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China's Media and Soft Power in Africa: Promotion and Perceptions
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Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa: Mediating Conflict in the Twenty-First Century
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