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: Lungile Augustine Tshuma, Trust Matsilele, Mbongeni Johnny Msimanga and Sadia Jamil
In this volume, the authors navigate the trends and patterns of journalists’ harassment in Africa, as they analyze the existing policy interventions and protection mechanisms to address this issue in the region. Case studies, drawn from selected African countries to offer insights into the state of harassment across the continent.
In addition to constructing new context-specific theoretical perspectives and strands, previous theories and research are updated by addressing the continual change and development of new discourses, including the use of big data and artificial intelligence to harass and intimidate journalists—to the extent of bringing mental health issues affecting journalists in their line of duty.
The central argument that emerges, among others, is that the state and form of harassment of African journalists is not universal, but location and context are some of the key factors that influence the form and character of harassment.
With its novel theoretical insights into the scope of journalism practices in Africa, this book will interest journalism and communication students, researchers and practitioners, as well as political scientists and those in gender studies.
Editors: Hopeton S. Duun, Massimo Ragnedda, Maria Laura Ruiu, Laura Robinson
This comprehensive Handbook explores the multiple ways in which people experience digital life. It maps the transitions in human civilization generated by such digital technologies as the Internet, Mobile telephony, Artificial Intelligence, the Metaverse, social media platforms and algorithms. It explores how the scarcity or abundance of digital affordances impacts access, governance and livelihoods in various parts of the world.
The book is presented in 27 chapters structured under five sections namely: Social Media and Digital Life worlds; Digital Affordances and Contestations; Digital Divides and Inclusion Strategies; Work, Culture and Digital Consumption, and New Media and Digital Journalism.
It interrogates the present and future of digital transitions in the context of everyday social production and consumption patterns. This is a rich and useful resource for media and communication scholars and practitioners.
Editors: Tirşe Erbaysal-Filibeli and Melis Öneren-Özbek
This edited volume takes an international multidisciplinary approach to examine the digital divide and global inequalities, as well as algorithmic bias. The concept of “(in)nocent lies” has been coined to refer to the explosion of misleading information online, and the existing trends in the spread of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Arranged thematically, the authors, under the various chapters, illustrate how misinformation harms vulnerable groups, leads to social lynching, and the effect of misinformation on certain social, political and cultural agendas, among other topics – proposing a critical approach to tackle these issues in related interdisciplinary fields.
This book will be of interest to students and academics in the areas of journalism, digital media, political communication and development studies, and gender and race studies.
Authors: Brooke Chambers, J. Siguru Wahutu
A lot has been written on how the media covered the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. Much of the analyses, however, has often focused on how journalists from the global north framed the issues, with very little insights on how global south journalists featured.
This article eschews the global north and investigates how African journalists covered the genocide as it unfolded. From a content analysis approach, the authors analyzed 96 news articles from three countries: Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, and 21 radio transcripts of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) in Rwanda. All reports featured the coverage during the first month of the genocide.
The findings revealed similar narratives about the violence between RTLM broadcasts, and the newspaper content. During the period of intense violence, for example, African journalists primarily framed the genocide in Rwanda as a civil war and ethnic conflict, and rarely used the genocide frame. This is counterintuitive when considering how many fields from the global north have been critiqued for not calling Rwanda a genocide early on.
In the end, it becomes clear that both findings and conclusions hold implications for comparative media analysis and the normalization of hateful rhetoric.