mediadev library

Outsourcing accountability: Extractive data practice and inequities of power in humanitarian third-party monitoring

Stephanie Diepeveen, John Bryant, Wasuge Mahad

Big Data & Society, issue January–March (2025), 14 pp.

"Since the early 2010s, humanitarian donors have increasingly contracted private firms to monitor and evaluate humanitarian activities, accompanied by a promise of improving accountability through their data and data analytics. This article contributes to scholarship on data practices in the humanit ... more

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Silent Crisis: Information, Decision-Making and Communities on the Frontlines of Climate Change

Stephanie Diepeveen, Tanya Filer, Tendai Ganduri et al.

Internews;StateUp (2023), 85 pp.

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Clones and zombies: Rethinking conspiracy theories and the digital public sphere through a (post)-colonial perspective

Iginio Gagliardone, Matti Pohjonen, Samuel Olaniram Stephanie Diepeveen

Information, Communication & Society, volume 26, issue 12 (2023), pp. 2419-2438

"This article investigates what is at stake in decolonising the study of conspiracy theories online. It challenges the confidence with which conspiracy theories are often dismissed as aberrations and negative externalities of digital ecosystems. Without reifying conspiracy theories, we identify as p ... more

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Demystifying the COVID-19 Infodemic: Conspiracies, Context, and the Agency of Users

Iginio Gagliardone, Stephanie Diepeveen, Kyle Findlay, Samuel Olaniran, Matti Pohjonen, Edwin Tallam

Social Media + Society, volume 7, issue 3 (2021), 16 pp.

"This article presents new empirical insights into what people do with conspiracy theories during crises. By suppressing the impulse to distinguish between truth and falsehood, which has characterized most scholarship on the COVID-19 “infodemic,” and engaging with claims surrounding two popular ... more

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Searching for a New Kenya: Politics and Social Media on the Streets of Mombasa

Stephanie Diepeveen

Cambridge: University of Cambridge (2020), xi, 270 pp.

"Searching for a New Kenya analyses public discussion in urban Kenya, focusing on the gatherings of citizens, both in-person and online, where people discuss issues of common concern to shed light on the role public discussion plays in politics and how social media affects political movements. Throu ... more

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Public participation and social accountability in Kenyan counties: A pilot study using interactive radio in Siaya

Sharath Srinivasan, Stephanie Diepeveen, Khadija Mohammed, Edgar Otieno

Nairobi; Cambridge: Africa's Voices Foundation;Urban Institute (2019), 34 pp.

"[...] this pilot study in Siaya County sought to assess what makes for more effective public participation in Kenya. In contributing to a timely policy concern about how to best meet the imperatives/aspirations of devolution, it sought also to address the limited empirical evidence in scholarship a ... more

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Publics in Africa in a Digital Age

Journal of Eastern African Studies, volume 13, issue 1 (2019), pp. 1-213

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Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
Top Insights

Maggie Dwyer, Thomas Molony (eds.)

London: Zed Books (2019), xiii, 299 pp.

"Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstra ... more

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The Power of Publics: Competing Imaginaries of the Radio Audience in Kenya and Zambia

Sharath Srinivasan, Stephanie Diepeveen

Cambridge: Centre of Governance and Human Rights, University of Cambridge (2016), 23 pp.

"With the liberalisation of the airwaves and the rising use of mobile phones since the 2000s, call- and text-in shows have become popular and lively features on broadcast media in Eastern Africa. Amidst expanding possibilities for listeners to speak and contribute to live radio broadcasts, new ways ... of imagining the position of the audience emerge. The audience is not simply comprised of passive listeners of publicly broadcast information, but actively engaged in contributing and reacting to what is aired. Yet the nature and political potential of the ‘audience-public’ is not straightforward. Interactive radio and TV shows are not just introducing specific audience members into the discussion, but who they are, what they represent, their influence and contribution to the space are uncertain. As audience members engage, those who manage and shape the broadcast must imagine, interpret and respond. Each participant in the discussion –whether listening, or involved in the station – producing, hosting, etc. – must come to terms with the nature of the interaction, Who is engaged? How should they respond? What are their reasons for being engaged and how might the introduction of this indeterminate audience-public relate to their intentions? Given the plurality of subjectivities, information, roles and intentions of those involved, the audience and why it matters can be imagined in multiple and competing ways. This paper interrogates how different actors involved in the radio broadcast imagine and respond to audience participation, and how these imaginaries become politically significant. This paper draws predominantly on interview and observation data on the perspectives of station hosts, guests and frequent callers of selected media houses and interactive broadcast shows in Zambia and Kenya. It examines the dynamic, plural and conflicting ways in which the audience is being reconstructed as an active ‘public’. In so doing, it shows the centrality of the imagined audience in the construction of the broadcast as a ‘public’, specifically how the indeterminate audience becomes the basis for competing imaginaries about power, authority and belonging. The political significance of the ‘audience-public’, it is argued, lies in the very fact that multiple and competing imaginaries are at play, which are invested in by actors pursuing diverse ends and thereby create tangible political effects." (Abstract) more

Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security Top Insights

Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
Top Insights