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.
Editors: Aljosha Karim Schapals and Christian Pentzold
Discover the evolving media environments across 45 countries with “Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes.” This comprehensive reference, created by a team of leading scholars, offers a deep dive into both enduring media systems and emerging trends worldwide. The book provides insightful country-specific analyses alongside regional perspectives, examining the key political, social, cultural, and economic forces shaping media infrastructures. Each of the 45 country profiles transitions smoothly from an overview to a detailed discussion of its unique media landscape, including historical background, development trends, current challenges, and future outlook. Perfect for quick reference or in-depth study, “Media Compass” is an essential resource for libraries, educators, and anyone involved in communication and media studies, journalism, or media production.
Editors: Elisabeth Vanderheiden and Claude- Hélène Mayer
The Covid-19 pandemic placed immense mental strain on people globally, both in the short and long term. Social distancing, repeated lockdowns, and the shift to remote work and home-schooling created new challenges for people’s mental well-being. During these times, humour emerged as a powerful coping strategy, providing much-needed relief and positively impacting people’s mental health. A recent study explored how humour was used in professional WhatsApp communications among colleagues in a consultancy organization in Gauteng, South Africa, during the hard lockdown of March and April 2020. Using a qualitative research design, the study found that humour helped these professionals cope with the difficulties of remote work.
Five main themes of humour emerged:
- Women professionals and work-life challenges
- Individual transformation from professional to “savage”
- Adaptation to new lifestyles
- Marital relationships during social isolation, and
- Jokes about the cure for Covid-19
These themes highlight how humour was used to deal with blurred work-life boundaries, changing family dynamics, and the uncertainties of the pandemic. The findings underscore the importance of humour as a tool for managing stress and maintaining morale during difficult times.
The study suggests that organizations can benefit from creating an environment where humor is embraced, helping employees navigate challenges with resilience and positivity. Future research could explore humor’s role in other digital communication channels or examine similar experiences across different cultural contexts.
Authors: Emma Pullen, Mufunaji & Jessica Noske-Turne
For the first time in history, the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games were broadcast on free-to-air (FTA) television across 49 territories in Sub-Saharan Africa. This was a groundbreaking development for the region, providing greater visibility for the Paralympic movement and highlighting disability sports on a large scale.
This article explores the story behind this historic broadcast and marks the first study to examine Paralympic production beyond the typical Global North-centric media practices, infrastructure, and disability narratives. Using a rich qualitative dataset—including interviews with the International Paralympic Committee, TV Media Sport (the broadcast partner), and Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, this article documents the challenges, logic, and politics of bringing the Paralympics to Sub-Saharan audiences.
The study reveals the complexities of navigating the differing perspectives, underlying neocolonial influences, and misunderstandings of the region’s disability politics. It emphasizes the roles national broadcasters, such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa, can play in the sustainable development of Paralympic broadcasts. These broadcasts are not just about sports coverage—they have significant pedagogical value in promoting progressive, localized disability politics, fostering disability activism, and advancing social justice.
This landmark broadcast has the potential to transform how disability sports are viewed across the region, paving the way for broader cultural acceptance and support of disability rights and representation. It marks a step toward creating a more inclusive media landscape where stories of resilience and excellence are shared with all.
Authors: Bernadine Jones and Adrian Hadland
When Hallin and Mancini introduced their influential “Three Models Theory” in 2004, South Africa was a young democracy, at just a decade old. Even then, the experiences of emerging democracies in the Global South posed critical challenges to their understanding of media and politics. Two decades later, South Africa has undergone significant transformation: increasing diversity in media ownership, the rapid rise of community and social media, digital disruption, and serious challenges to media freedom.
But how does Hallin and Mancini’s theory hold water in this evolving context? This article reviews scholarly critiques of the Three Models Theory, including the follow-up work Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (2012), assessing whether the original framework still effectively captures the relationship between media and politics in the Global South.
The article further evaluates Hadland’s (2012) “Africanisation” of the model, considering South Africa’s complex postcolonial realities. It also incorporates Hallin et al.’s (2021) expanded hybridisation model, suggesting that these updated approaches offer a more nuanced understanding of how media and political systems intertwine in postcolonial settings like South Africa. By exploring these adaptations, the article highlights the evolving dynamics of media and politics in an increasingly complex and diverse global landscape.