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Digitalization & Gender Norms: Learnings from CARE's Digital Pilot for VSLA Members in Rwanda & Uganda

Eric Kaduru, Julia Arnold

Care (2024), 10 pp.

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Digital Ecosystem Country Assessment (DECA): Ghana

Reyn Anderson, Yaroslav Eferin, Kate Gromova, Vlad Manoil, Victor Teppeh

USAID, Digital Frontiers Project, external version (2024), 149 pp.

"Ghana is among Sub-Saharan Africa’s leaders in digital transformation. Over the past decade, the government has put the key institutions, legislative frameworks, strategies, and policies in place that are necessary to drive change. The Ministry of Communications and Digitalization leads and coord ... inates development and implementation of a core set of policies and strategies that are digitally transforming the government, economy, and society. The ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) Policy has guided this journey for more than a decade. A new Digital Economy Policy is drafted and under review to drive the next stage of Ghana’s digital development. The National Financial Inclusion and Development Strategy and the National Cyber Security Policy and Strategy have also been key. Ghana adopted an inclusive approach to developing its cybersecurity strategy, which contributed to improved cybersecurity capacity and considered citizens’ online safety and freedoms. However, a clear strategy for protecting critical national infrastructure is missing. Ghana has been a pioneer and champion of digital government transformation in West Africa over the past decade, with funding and support from the World Bank. Important whole-of-government platforms and services have been put in place, including the Government Wide Area Network (GWAN), which provides internet connection to more than 1,000 district assemblies, hospitals, police stations, and post offices across the country; a National Data Center; the Smart workplace suite, which includes email and productivity tools for government employees; and Ghana.gov portal, a one-stop-shop for citizen services. Still, digital government transformation is incomplete. Easy, efficient, online government services are in demand, but the Ghana.gov portal options are limited, and most major government service providers have their own separate online services portals. The national identity Ghana Card could enhance digital service delivery by providing a universally recognized, secure, and easy-to-use means of digital identification and authentication for citizens when accessing both public and private digital services, but the current identification system is not integrated with other government-operated databases, significantly reducing its many potential applications. The Regional Coordinating Councils, and metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies (MMDAs) are just now embarking on the digital transformation journey. The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development coordinates their efforts. Challenges for Ghana’s remaining efforts at digital government transformation include adequate funding to manage and maintain its connectivity and data center infrastructure, affordable internet for regional governments, inadequate digital literacy and skills among mid-level and regional staff, or related national training programs. A big skill gap exists in cybersecurity; Ghana faces a deficit of skilled cybersecurity professionals. The government also needs to improve efforts at stakeholder engagement and awareness-raising when developing new policy proposals." (Executive summary, pages 11-12) more

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The criteria for excellence in journalism education in Africa

Paris: International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) (2024), 7 pp.

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AI and natural disaster analysis: Needs analysis during disaster using Artificial Intelligence by Citibeats, February 2018 - September 2021

Citibeats;UNESCO (2024), 21 pp.

"The main conclusions drawn from the analysis of online opinions during natural disasters in Africa are highlighted below: Climate change is one of the main concerns of the African population in recent years. This climate problem is considered to be causing more and greater natural disasters on the ... more

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Where is the money? A global perspective on forms of funding, financing and investment for public interest media
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Clare Cook, Ross Settles, Chris Kabwato, Hassan Abbas, Alexandre Goudineau, Janine Warner, Laura Aguirre

Copenhagen: International Media Support (IMS) (2024), 63 pp.

"Two years in the making, this report unfolds regional perspectives of new forms of funding, financing and investment for public interest media. It provides a multistakeholder reflection in four regions of the world on how public interest media can best be supported over the next decade. Through con ... more

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Same threats, different platforms? Female journalists’ experiences of online gender-based violence in selected newsrooms in Namibia

Itai Zviyita, Admire Mare

Journalism, volume 25, issue 4 (2024), pp. 779-799

"Concerns about the disproportionate levels of online gender-based abuse experienced by female journalists when compared to their male counterparts have attracted sizeable scholarly attention in the last few years. Extant studies have highlighted that female journalists experience online forms of ha ... more

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Radio Kwizera: Media development in crisis regions

Sheila Mysorekar

Deutsche Welle DW Akademie, March 12 (2024)

"Kwizera" means hope. Since 2020, DW Akademie has been supporting a radio station of the same name in northwestern Tanzania. It provides vital information to refugees and the surrounding communities." (Introduction)

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‘They blame the messenger’: Re-examining the critique of journalists reporting on genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica

Caitlin Knight

Journalism, volume 25, issue 10 (2024), pp. 2117–2134

"Reporting on cases of genocide presents distinct complexities and challenges for journalists, who must negotiate practical, professional, and emotional experiences that challenge traditional expectations of their role. Previous research has provided strident critiques of this reporting, arguing Wes ... more

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Freedom of the Press, and Journalism Practices in Times of Uncertainty in the Case of Ethiopia

Mulatu Alemayehu Moges

Journalism Practice (2024), 19 pp.

"Ethiopia has been in a new transition since 2018 which resulted in changes in political arenas. In this period, the country has also been experiencing internal conflict and political instabilities. This article assesses how the political environment is convenient for the journalists to freely repor ... more

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“When One Finger Picks Oil, It Reaches Others”: An Examination of Nigerian Journalists’ Perspective on Motivations for Online Harassment

Temple Uwalaka, A. Fred Amadi

African Journalism Studies, volume 44, issue 4 (2024), pp. 289-309

"Online harassment of journalists is increasingly becoming a global phenomenon. Many attempts have been made to investigate the prevalence of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, findings prove that online harassment of journalists is indeed on the rise. What is lacking, so far, in the literature is an in ... more

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Problematic Encounters with Wolf Warrior II: Antithetic Reception of “China in Africa” Amongst Chinese and African Audiences

Yu Xiang, Xiaoxing Zhang, Jiarong Zhang

Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, volume 20, issue 2 (2024), pp. 50-70

"China in Africa’ has become an irresistible topic in any discussion of China, with the former’s growing engagement with the latter. The unprecedented popularity of Wolf Warrior II in China, which is set in Africa, is a testament to how official propaganda of national selfconfidence can be affir ... more

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Constructing Africa in Chinese international news reporting: Peace or conflict journalism?

Valerie A. Cooper, Innocent Chiluwa

Critical Discource Studies (2024), 17 pp.

"China’s extensive media presence in Africa aims to distinguish itself through the use of constructive journalism in contrast with the perceived dominance of conflict journalism by Western media outlets. However, many scholars have raised questions of consistency surrounding Chinese media’s use ... more

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Sauti za Waandishi: Journalists’ voices. A survey of Tanzanian media practitioners

Dar es Salaam: Twaweza East Africa (2024), 20 pp.

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Digital Platforms and the Global South: Reconfiguring Power Relations in the Cultural Industries

Philippe Bouquillion, Christine Ithurbide, Tristan Mattelart (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2024), xiii, 239 pp.

"This book addresses the issues raised by digital platforms in the Global South, with an emphasis on the cultural stakes involved. It brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers - including political economists, socio-economists, geographers, media sociologists or anthropologists - who ... more

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Aid and the news agenda: Examining the forces shaping NGO-produced humanitarian media

Michael Sunderland

Bournemouth University, Doctoral Thesis (2024), 268 pp.

"This study examines the external influences that shape NGO-produced news content concerning humanitarian crises in East, West and Central Africa. Employing a thematic analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews with humanitarian communicators and a content analysis of the humanitarian press rel ... eases of four major NGOs, it seeks to establish the types of content NGO communications staff consider most effective for achieving mainstream media coverage, how they access such content, and any forces influencing their eventual production of news. In line with notions of media logic (Altheide and Snow 1979; Cottle and Nolan 2007) and news cloning (Fenton 2010), it uncovers a reliance on hard-hitting humanitarian statistics and powerful first-person testimonies, which are considered essential for achieving news coverage. Statistics are found to be most often sourced from publicly available humanitarian datasets, often managed by the United Nations, and are considered susceptible to politicisation by authorities implicated in certain crises. First-person testimonies are usually gathered in-person by NGO staff and are affected by issues of physical access to crisis zones including monitoring by local authorities and demands for media sign-off. Additionally, a humanitarian NGO’s decision on whether to speak out publicly about a crisis is found to be often weighed up against threats to staff and programme safety. Examining these issues through a lens of agenda building theory (Cobb and Elder 1971), this study introduces the concept of agenda erosion, describing the phenomenon by which powerful actors, including host authorities and western governmental and intergovernmental donors, exert influence to undermine agenda building activities by NGOs in the context of humanitarian crises. Methods of agenda erosion might include demanding sign-off of media content, the control of physical access to crisis zones for communications staff, and the politicisation of humanitarian data. Unlike the traditional view of NGOs being producers of information subsidies (Gandy 1982), this concept recognises that, as news producers, NGOs also accept information subsidies, including humanitarian data, from other actors. These subsidies are used by NGOs to increase their own agenda building effectiveness but can also allow other, potentially conflicting, priorities to influence the media agenda too. NGOs are now widely regarded as important players in the production of international news (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Cooper, 2011; Powers 2018) and these findings suggest agenda erosion is in-part responsible for the continuing adherence of aid organisations to established patterns of news construction (Cottle & Nolan 2007; Fenton 2010; Waisbord 2011; Powers 2018). Only crises with hard-hitting data or emotive personal stories are likely to achieve mainstream media coverage but exposure to such sources is often closely guarded by the most powerful actors in certain crises. As a result, some crises continue to go underreported and NGOs risk being silenced or, worse, used as proxy mouthpieces by powers implicated in the humanitarian context to which they are attempting to respond." (Abstract) more

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South African Media and Politics: Is the Three Models Approach Still Valid After Two Decades?

Bernardine Jones, Adrian Hadland

Media and Communication, volume 12, issue 7723 (2024), 12 pp.

"When Hallin and Mancini (2004) produced their watershed three models theory, South Africa was a new democracy barely a decade old. Even then, along with other countries of the Global South, the experience of a young democracy posed certain critical challenges to Hallin and Mancini's understanding o ... more

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Using social media for agricultural information dissemination: The role of informant-recipient homogeneity

Ryo Takahashi, Yasuyuki Todo, Yu Ri Kim, Yuzuka Kashiwagi, Denu Lemma Tsegaye

Journal of Developpment Effectiveness (2024), 28 pp.

"This study uses a randomised experiment targeting wheat producers in Ethiopia to examine the impact of providing market price information through Facebook on farmers’ sales behaviour. To identify the effect of informant homogeneity, we distinguished the informants’ nationality as either Ethiopi ... more

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Digital Inclusion for Youth Democratic Participation in Namibia

Josua Hamunyela

Windhoek: Namibia Media Trust (2024), 24 pp.

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Emerging Issues in Digital Rights in Africa: A Discussion Paper for the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms (AfDec) Coalition

Edetaen Ojo

Johannesburg; Windhoek: Association for Progressive Communications (APC);NMT Media Foundation (2024), 19 pp.

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Ten years of building a movement for Digital Rights in Africa: Impact of the African Declaration on Rights and Freedoms in Africa

Koliwe Majama

Johannesburg; Windhoek: Association for Progressive Communications (APC);NMT Media Foundation (2024), 20 pp.

Where is the money? A global perspective on forms of funding, financing and investment for public interest media Top Insights

Where is the money? A global perspective on forms of funding, financing and investment for public interest media
Top Insights