Compiled by Elva Nziza, for AJENda and Afromedia.network.
We present a short selection of publications of interest to the African communications and media studies research community.
- Communication for Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa: Amplifying the Marginalised Voices (Routledge, 2026)
Editors: Chimwemwe Richard Chavinda, Victor Chikaipa, Jimmy Kainja, Japhet Mchakulu, and Yamikani Ndasauka
This volume offers a timely and compelling exploration of the transformative power of communication across the African continent, bringing together rich case studies and engaging narratives that illustrate how communication practices—ranging from community dialogue and storytelling to digital media activism—are driving social change in Sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors examine key issues such as gender inequality, public health, human rights, and participatory governance, demonstrating how local communities actively use communication tools to challenge exclusion and promote inclusion.
A notable strength of the book lies in its focus on grassroots initiatives and the growing influence of digital platforms. It highlights how emerging media technologies are enabling marginalized groups to articulate their own experiences, reshape dominant narratives, and participate more fully in civic life. In doing so, the book underscores communication not merely as a tool, but as a catalyst for collective agency and sustainable development.
Accessible yet scholarly, this edited collection will be of particular interest to researchers, students, and practitioners in media and communication, development studies, and political science. It is also a valuable resource for journalists and activists seeking practical insights into how communication strategies can amplify marginalized voices and contribute to meaningful social transformation across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Authors: Ignas Kalpokas and Julija Kalpokienė
Rather than accepting dominant narratives that portray AI development as inevitable progress, this book provides a thought-provoking and timely examination of the societal transformations driven by artificial intelligence and critically interrogates the key “crossroads” at which societies must actively make choices about the role of digital technologies in shaping the future. It challenges deterministic perspectives by highlighting the complex interplay of values, ideologies, and power structures that underpin technological advancement.
Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach, the authors explore a wide range of domains—including education, creativity, work, warfare, human biology, and even space colonisation. Across these areas, the book contrasts mainstream, progress-oriented visions of AI with more critical perspectives, revealing the ethical and societal dilemmas embedded in each pathway.
A central contribution of the book is its emphasis on value-based decision-making. It demonstrates that choices surrounding AI are not merely technical or economic, but deeply moral: between efficiency and diversity, technological possibility and human desirability, and uncritical acceptance versus ethical reflection. By exposing the often-hidden assumptions behind AI discourse, the authors encourage readers to recognise their agency in shaping technological futures.
Accessible to graduate students and scholars in media and communication, sociology, cultural studies, and related fields, this open-access volume is a valuable resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the ethical and societal implications of AI.
- Casual Democracy: News, Participation, and Deliberation in Local Communities Dominated by Social Media (Springer, 2026)
Author: Steen Steensen
Drawing on immersive autoethnographic research conducted in Frederiksberg (Denmark) and Ringwood (UK), the book offers an insightful and original contribution to debates on the future of local democracy in the age of digital platforms as it explores communities where traditional journalism has a minimal presence and social media platforms dominate the local public sphere. Through lived experience and close observation, Steensen introduces the concept of “casual democracy” to describe these emerging forms of civic life.
The book argues that in such contexts, democratic participation becomes more informal, fragmented, and shaped by the logics of social media rather than structured journalistic mediation. While these environments may enable new forms of engagement, they also raise important questions about the quality of public deliberation, access to reliable information, and the overall health of democratic processes.
Blending accessible storytelling with strong academic grounding, the author maintains a careful balance between narrative and theory. The work engages deeply with existing literature while remaining readable for a broader audience interested in media, journalism, and civic participation.
This book will be particularly valuable for scholars and students in media and communication, political science, and journalism studies, as well as practitioners concerned with the implications of platformisation for local governance and democratic life.
Author: Ella Klik
At a time when digital culture is often defined by the idea that “nothing ever disappears,” Klik challenges this assumption by foregrounding the role of erasure in media systems and offers a compelling rethinking of how we understand media, storage, and memory in both historical and contemporary contexts. The book argues that deletion, removal, and loss are not accidental or undesirable by-products of media technologies, but fundamental processes that have shaped their development from the 19th century to the present.
Spanning a wide historical range—from early sound recording technologies to modern cloud storage—Negative Media demonstrates how the tension between the desire to preserve and the material limits of storage has always required acts of selection and erasure. Through engaging case studies, including the well-known loss of the Apollo 11 moon landing tapes, Klik traces a “genealogy of undoing” that reveals how absence and disappearance are central to media practices.
A key contribution of the book lies in its shift away from preservation as the dominant framework for understanding media. Instead, Klik highlights reuse, transformation, and the productive role of loss, offering a fresh perspective on how media systems manage both scarcity and abundance.
Blending media history and theory, this work will appeal to scholars and students in media and communication, cultural studies, and digital humanities, as well as anyone interested in the evolving relationship between technology, memory, and forgetting.
Author: Ian Reilly
Grounded in decolonial thought, the book offers a bold and timely exploration of how media imaginaries can function as tools for resistance, worldmaking, and the pursuit of more just and inclusive futures. Starting from the premise that imaginaries — shared ways of envisioning identity, community, and social life — play a central role in shaping how societies understand themselves and their possibilities, the book argues that dominant imaginaries have long been shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism, often limiting what is perceived as a “good life.” In response, the book seeks to decentre these inherited frameworks and foreground alternative, decolonial imaginaries that open up emancipatory futures for both human and more-than-human worlds.
Through a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach, Decolonial Media Imaginaries engages with themes such as spectacle and representation, corporate technological visions, energy infrastructures, community storytelling, pedagogical reparations, and artistic practices. It also highlights the importance of Black and Indigenous media futures, positioning them as key sites for imagining and enacting transformative change.
Blending speculative insight with strong theoretical grounding, the book introduces the concept of “imaginaries-work” as a set of practices and strategies for reshaping collective futures. In doing so, it offers valuable tools for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in media, cultural studies, and decolonial theory.
Featured image by Vera via Pexels.