"This book analyses the online presence of African language media. The chapters in the book focus on the speed, structure, content, navigation and interactivity, operations and performance, and audience of the online media. They also pay particular attention to how social media such as Facebook, Twi
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tter and WhatsApp have been appropriated by African language media. Using a wide range of case studies, the contributors assess the challenges of adopting digital technologies by the media, and how the technologies have impacted journalistic practice and media operations." (Publisher description)
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"The volume digs beneath the standardised and universalised veneer of professionalism to unpack routine practices and normative trends shaped by local factors, including the structural conditions of deprivation, entrenched political instability (and interference), pervasive neo-patrimonial governanc
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e systems, and the influences of technological developments. These varied and complex circumstances are shown to profoundly shape the foundations of journalism in Africa, resulting in routine practices that are both normatively distinct and equally in tune with (imported) Western journalistic cultures. The book thus broadly points to the dialectical nature of news production and the inconsistent and contradictory relationships that characterise news production cultures in Africa." (Publisher description)
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"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
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n and Eurocentric discourses of knowledge-production. As the decolonial turn takes centre stage across Africa, this collection further rethinks media and communication research in a post-colonial setting and provides empirical evidence as to why some of the methods conceptualised in Europe will not work in Africa. The result is a thorough appraisal of the current threats, challenges and opportunities facing the discipline on the continent." (Publisher description)
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"Popular theatre occupies a special space in Matabeleland because it is situated in the everyday lives of ordinary people, and is able to articulate their experiences and to create spaces for them to ‘speak to power’. In the wake of the Gukurahundi massacres and perceived marginalization of Mata
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beleland in the 1980s, theatre groups used their plays to probe issues that were shunned by mainstream media. We argue that theatre has been used as part of radical citizen media in a context in which mainstream public spheres are restricted. We also demonstrate that theatre groups in Matabeleland have shifted between ‘Matabeleland particularism’ and addressing broader, ‘national’ concerns, reflecting historical context. However, theatre is not always used to express views that support the downtrodden against the establishment. In the Matabeleland case and also Zimbabwe as a whole, theatre has also been employed by the state and other pro-establishment groups for ideological mobilization." (Abstract)
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"Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice
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has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology. Online content manipulation contributed to a seventh consecutive year of overall decline in internet freedom, along with a rise in disruptions to mobile internet service and increases in physical and technical attacks on human rights defenders and independent media. Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech." (Page 1)
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"Radio from its beginning has been a revolutionary technology adaptable both to violent overthrow of corrupt regimes and gradual almost unheeded social change. This issue of WPCC invited submission of papers on the subject of radio and revolution. We suggested that revolution be intended in its broa
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dest sense, encompassing not only the violent overthrow of governments and their counter measures but also revolution in the sense of radical social change. Radio’s long set of histories and traditions of activism and community-building are foremost in this issue’s material. This editorial reflects on key themes of the journal issue: motivations of free radio practitioners, key phases in development of community broadcasting, radio’s potential for social liberation of several kinds and its claims to be a form of mass self-communication in which users also take charge of the media platform itself and lastly radio’s presence alongside social media like Twitter in contemporary activism and protests." (Editorial abstract)
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"Journalists in many countries are experimenting with how to build trust and engage with audiences, and our report examines their efforts. In our study we profile organizations that are working to build bridges with their readers, viewers and listeners and deliver relevant news to local audiences. W
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e surveyed 17 organizations and conducted interviews with representatives of 15 organizations, one of which chose to remain anonymous. Among others we spoke to Chequeado in Argentina, GroundUp in South Africa, Raseef 22 in the Middle East, 263 Chat in Zimbabwe, Krautreporter and Correct!v in Germany, as well as Bristol Cable in the UK [...] Although the groups we surveyed are concerned by the broader phenomena of falling trust in media and media credibility, they are also, by necessity, focused on immediate fixes important to their organizations and readerships. Some believe that media credibility depends on engagement with readers. Some place more emphasis on journalism practices, including audience engagement, ethical standards and news gathering practices. The outlets we profiled use digital technology to communicate with audiences. Some also involve their readers in sourcing and sometimes verifying information. Some conduct focus groups and online surveys. Responding to comments online is part of their engagement efforts. Readers appreciate investigative reporting as well as stories that touch on their daily lives [...] There seems to be a tradeoff between audience size and the quality of content produced. Some groups with large followings (Hivisasa and 263Chat) promote headlines and short snippets rather than carrying out deep investigative reporting [...] Several groups said their audience is different from what their founders had originally expected. The reach of the outlets we surveyed is generally not as diverse as they had hoped. Their audiences tend to be educated and urban and, in some cases, include large diaspora communities. The outlets largely cater to niche audiences, but they have broader reach through their online presence and national influence when their stories are picked up by legacy media or other outlets." (https://gijn.org, accessed: June 8, 2018)
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"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
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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)
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"This edited collection argues that the connective and orientation roles ascribed to diasporic media overlook the wider roles they perform in reporting intractable conflicts in the Homeland. Considering the impacts of conflict on migration in the past decades, it is important to understand the capac
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ity of diasporic media to escalate or deescalate conflicts and to serve as a source of information for their audiences in a competitive and fragmented media landscape. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapters examine how the diasporic media projects the constructive and destructive outcomes of conflicts to their particularistic audiences within the global public sphere. The result is a volume that makes an important contribution to scholarship by offering critical engagements and analyzing how the diasporic media communicates information and facilitates dialogue between conflicting parties, while adding to new avenues of empirical case studies and theory development in comprehending the media coverage of conflict." (Publisher description)
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"Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives yet the impact on people with disabilities has gone largely unscrutinised. Similarly, while social media and disability are often both observed through a focus on the Western, developed and English-speaking world, different global
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perspectives are often overlooked. This collection explores the opportunities and challenges social media represents for the social inclusion of people with disabilities from a variety of different global perspectives that include Africa, Arabia and Asia along with European, American and Australasian perspectives and experiences." (Publisher description)
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"The book aims to situate the cultural, social and, in some cases, transnational context of ICT appropriation and virtual connectivity so as to reposition Africans from various countries and contexts as active agents of social change. The intricacies of local ICT use and the dynamics of mobility in
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the African context enables us to better understand material cultures, relationships between people, new media and social networking. Equally explored in relation to ICTs are the social and spatial dynamics of communication, association and belonging across spaces – particularly physical borders, social boundaries and confines and possibilities informed by the habitus of bodies and practices." (Publisher description)
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"Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with more governments than ever before targeting social media and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during antigovernment protests. Public-facing social media platforms like Fac
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ebook and Twitter have been subject to growing censorship for several years, but in a new trend, governments increasingly target messaging and voice communication apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. These services are able to spread information and connect users quickly and securely, making it more difficult for authorities to control the information landscape or conduct surveillance. The increased controls show the importance of social media and online communication for advancing political freedom and social justice. It is no coincidence that the tools at the center of the current crackdown have been widely used to hold governments accountable and facilitate uncensored conversations." (Page 1)
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"This study focuses on the unprecedented ways in which newspaper journalism helped the cause of democratisation at the height of the economic and political governance crisis, also known as the ‘Zimbabwe Crisis’, from 1997 to 2010. The research is designed as a qualitative case study of The Daily
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News, an independent private newspaper. It was based on semi-structured interviews with respondents, who were mainly journalists and politicians living in Zimbabwe. The analytical lens of alternative media facilitates a construction of how The Daily News and its journalists experienced, reported, confronted and navigated state authoritarianism in a historical moment of political turmoil. The study discusses the complex relationships between the independent and privately owned press, the political opposition and civil society organisations. The research provides an original analysis of the operations of The Daily News and its journalists in the context of a highly undemocratic political moment. Some journalists crossed the floor to join civic and opposition forces in order to confront the state. The state responded through arrests and physical attacks against the journalists; however, journalists continued to work with opposition forces while the government enacted repressive media and security law to curtail coverage of the crisis." (Abstract)
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"This book investigates the role of citizen journalism in railroading social and political changes in sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies are drawn from research conducted by leading scholars from the fields of media studies, journalism, anthropology and history, who uniquely probe the real impact of t
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echnologies in driving change in Africa." (Publisher description)
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"Since the end of genocide in 1987 Zimbabwe has remained a zone of ‘conflicts’, and the enduring debates surrounding this genocide, especially in public-owned but state-Controlled media, call for critical attention. Three years after independence, in 1980, Zimbabwe was plunged into a genocide na
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med ‘Gukurahundi’ (meaning the rain that washes the chaff away after harvest) that lasted until 1987. This article argues that there has been a clash of ‘interests’ playing out in the mediation of this yet-to-be-officially addressed genocide. Through evidence from public-owned media, the media that carry the official voice of the ruling party, I argue that public media have seen genocide from conflicting and complex angles, making it difficult to reach a consensus suitable for national building based on genocide truths, meanings and effects to Zimbabweans. I specifically use the Unity Accord-associated holiday, the Unity Day, and its associated debates to pursue two arguments. First, public media have played an ambiguous role in appreciating the conflictual and multipronged nature of the genocide within ZANU-PF. Second, public media have largely been supportive of, and even complicit in, official silences on genocide debates and memory. The article uses public sphere and narrative analysis as frameworks for understanding the operations of public media journalism in the mediation of genocide nearly 30 years after its occurrence." (Abstract)
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"This article constitutes an examination on how citizen journalism has challenged Robert Mugabe’s authoritarian regime on issues pertaining to national heroes and usages of the Heroes’ Acre as central national identity markers. Under Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe has seen the public being limited
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from directly participating in salient national debates. ZANU-PF’s control of the official public sphere has also constrained alternative views from ventilating the government-controlled communicative spaces. The party’s narrative on heroes, the Heroes’ Acre and national identity has gained a taken-for-granted status in the public media. This has obtained against the backdrop of what has become known as the Zimbabwe crisis, characterised by a declining economy, a constricted political space, a breakdown in the rule of law, and the subsequent flight of a number of Zimbabweans into the diaspora. The accompanying wave of technological advancements and the mushrooming of mostly diaspora-based online media have opened up new vistas of communication, enabling a hitherto ‘silenced’ community of ordinary people to participate in national conversations. The conclusion reached here, is that citizen journalism has not only enhanced the culture of conversation among people (as espoused under democratic conditions) but has also covered up the democratic deficit experienced in the public sphere, mediated by traditional media, parliament and pavement radio." (Abstract)
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