{"title":"The Rise of Peripheral Actors in Media Regulation in South Africa: An Entry of Social Media Mob(s)","authors":"R. F. Mukhudwana","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2022.2032783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2022.2032783","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the nature of social media mobs as an informal regulation of journalism by exploring selected cases. To a limited degree, social media mobs are already in practice without standardisation and compliance. It is therefore essential to study and theorise about the informal regulation of journalism by social media mobs than to dismiss them as useless trolls. This paper is theoretically grounded by media accountability systems and the fifth estate. The paper discusses the practical applications of the fifth estate in the informal regulation of journalism by describing mobbing cultures towards journalists such as trolling, digital vigilantism, cybermob censorship and social media mobs as the fifth estate and media accountability systems in practice. Astroturfing is presented as a challenge to these initiatives. The article zones in on social media mobs and presents four South African case studies. It was found that social media mobs are not always a unitary mass; they are as divided as the public interests that mobilise them. Four journalistic transgression categories that social media mobs respond to are (a) the quality of journalism, ethics and professional convention; (b) media independence and bias; (c) universal moralisation: hate speech, racism and classism; and (d) disinformation and fake news. These parameters are context- and time-bound.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"153 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46597210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David Cheruiyot, J. Wahutu, Admire Mare, G. Ogola, H. Mabweazara
{"title":"Making News Outside Legacy Media","authors":"David Cheruiyot, J. Wahutu, Admire Mare, G. Ogola, H. Mabweazara","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2021.2046397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2021.2046397","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT One of the recurrent questions in journalism scholarship is whether journalism as a profession and institution can grow and thrive outside the traditional newsroom (especially, with the dominant agenda-setting media in most African countries being either state- or privately run press). In introducing this special issue, we revisit this pertinent question, while also considering the implications of today’s digitally networked continent, and the question of the ever-expanding communication ecology that is a dynamic space for media production by both human and non-human actors. First, we acknowledge that the current peripheralization of journalism is a global phenomenon, and that digital technologies seem to reproduce similar trends and patterns in various journalistic cultures across the world, and therefore the increasingly connected continent cannot be understood in isolation. The case studies featured in our special issue show that digital technologies have clearly fast-tracked the changes in media production and intensified the disruptive effects of the operations of non-journalistic actors within the continent’s communication ecology. We then argue that when carefully considered, these changes in media production and journalistic practices are merely part of a continuation of trends that preceded the digital age. Non-traditional ways of making news have been driven mainly by non-journalistic actors’ perpetual need to challenge or question traditional actors, in media and politics, as the exclusive disseminators, the dominant voices, or the sole arbiters in spaces of deliberation within the communication ecology.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"1 - 14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42028049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mixing “Nonsense with Substance”: Negotiating Satirical and Investigative Journalism Hybrid Genre in Nigeria","authors":"J. Ogbodo","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2022.2041454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2022.2041454","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Journalism has witnessed steady transformations over the years. Peripheral actors’ intrusion into the mainstream journalism practice has added extra layers to our understanding of these changes. This study examines the interplay between satirical journalism and investigative journalism in Nigerian setting. The study employs a semistructured interview to evaluate how satirical and investigative journalism genres blend. Through this process, the study interrogates how the hybridity of this genre is negotiated in an African/Nigerian setting. Ten satirists (participants) provided a self-assessment of their production process. The study demonstrates that Nigerian satirical shows such as Pararan Mock News and Keepin it Real with Adeola fill a gap in Nigerian journalism where many news organisations are not critical of the government. This type of satire performs the watchdog role of journalism by calling the powerful to account through humour and jokes. As such, the line between satirical journalism and mainstream journalism keeps blurring. Although satirical journalism is evolving in Nigeria, scholarship in this area should consider it as a genuine source of (political) information and an important form of public sense-making and knowledge production. The taxonomy of satirical journalism emerging from this study includes critical, entertainment, advocacy and investigative satire. In all, this study has established that journalism and comedy practice could blend together in news satire to create a hybrid genre that combines “substance” and “nonsense” to interrogate societal anomalies.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"137 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43198348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Competing or Complimentary Actors in the Journalistic Field? An Analysis of the Mediation of the COVID-19 Pandemic by Mainstream and Peripheral Content Creators in Zimbabwe","authors":"Wishes Tendayi Mututwa, Admire Mare","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2022.2031244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2022.2031244","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Unlike previous pandemics and epidemics, the ever-mutating coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) has attracted the attention of both the mainstream and peripheral journalistic actors across the globe. Similar to professional journalists, peripheral actors produced and circulated locally specific public health information on COVID-19 and challenged state media narratives. This article, which focuses on Zimbabwe, attempts to critically analyse the ways in which mainstream and peripheral journalistic actors complemented and competed against each other in their bid to produce and circulate credible and truthful information about the COVID-19. The article employs a mix of in-depth interviews with mainstream and peripheral journalistic actors as well as qualitative content analysis of news articles published by The Herald and Twitter posts published by peripheral actors (including public intellectuals, social media influencers, ordinary people) popularly known as Twimbos (Zimbabweans on Twitter). Although public health communication was centralised by the government bodies, this article provides new evidence of how peripheral journalistic actors played an instrumental role in educating and providing life-saving information about the pandemic as well as exposing multiple government failures in handling the COVID-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"82 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47891763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Subverting Journalistic Routines: When Political Satire Intervenes to Challenge Public Broadcasting National Discourses","authors":"Danford Zirugo","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2021.2005110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2021.2005110","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Comparing and contrasting the journalistic routines that manifest in a Zimbabwean political satire show, The Week with Cde Fatso, and those manifesting in content from the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television, the study argues that political satire’s alternativeness as a form of journalism lies in its journalistic role performance. By subverting conventional journalistic routines, satire can offer an alternative version of journalism that is overlooked by traditional media due to different forces. Under Zimbabwe’s conditions, The Week has risen to fulfil interventionist, watchdog and civic journalism roles that have been neglected by the national broadcaster.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"121 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48361101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring Trust/Mistrust in Journalistic Practice: An Actor-network Analysis of a Kenyan Newsroom","authors":"W. Wamunyu","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2022.2026430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2022.2026430","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The entry of non-traditional actors into aspects of journalistic practice has been widely explored in scholarship, as have expressions of the public’s trust in journalistic work. However, there is a scarcity of research addressing the construct of trust in relation to the interactions among traditional and non-traditional journalism actors engaged in news production. Through the use of actor-network theory and by applying qualitative case study design, this study focused on the nature of journalistic practice in a digitally disrupted Kenyan newsroom, and how trust/mistrust manifested itself within the actor-network of journalistic practice. Theoretical and thematic analyses established the social and technological actors that had joined the process of journalistic practice while four findings emerged addressing notions of trust/mistrust within the actor-network. These findings were as follows: trust occurs within an established routinized process; trust is enacted within a particular news media environment; new entrants in journalistic practice need to demonstrate value to gain trusted entry in the actor-network; and trust is engendered at institutional level but needs acceptance at individual level.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"99 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48124578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making News with the Citizens! Audience Participation and News-making Practices at the AMH Group","authors":"T. Tshabangu","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2021.2011759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2021.2011759","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This production-based ethnographic study investigates citizen participation and news-making practices at the Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) group in Zimbabwe. The focus is on the participation of ordinary citizens in previously closed journalistic processes and their everyday news-making practices at a professional news outlet. The study is anchored on the concepts of citizen participation and news-making practices. Data were collected through field observations and interviews in 2018. The findings reveal that citizen participation in news production processes at the AMH group was enabled by digital technologies and organisational policies. However, there were several contextual factors, such as the gendered digital divide, that limited the potential for citizen participation in journalism. Citizen participation was convenient for the AMH group because it tapped into the free labour of citizen journalists in reporting hyperlocal news and in crowdsourcing for news materials, thereby cutting financial costs of hiring correspondents and maintaining bureau offices. The AMH group shifted from traditional to audience-centric news-making practices that relied on digital technologies to put ordinary citizens at the centre of the news-making through structured, unstructured, hybrid and digital practices. This is a de-Westernised contribution to contemporary debates in journalism studies about citizen participation and digital news production practices.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"15 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46754088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What is News? A Young Peoples’ Perspective in Kenya","authors":"E. Tallam","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2021.2011760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2021.2011760","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 This study investigates emerging news consumption patterns among a contingent of young people drawn from two public universities in Kenya. Guided by the relatively new concept of scalable sociality and emerging third wave of non-normative audience studies in sub-Saharan Africa, this study maps emerging news exposure avenues among young people in Kenya. Through a mixed approach, it specifically explores how young people access and consume news through internet-enabled mobile devices. It also probes how young people define news and draws a nexus between the rise of news technologies, particularly mobile phones and the shifting definition(s) of news. Findings support the conclusion that internet-enabled mobile devices continue to cause unprecedented disruption in Kenya. This has profoundly altered the understanding of news. News was mainly understood as a node that connects young people to themselves and to the social world. However, the ambivalence evident in young people’s conceptualization of news is reflective of the dynamic society within which the internet and mobile devices are critical catalysts in accessing and consuming news. News consumption thus becomes a complex, multilayered process enmeshed in a web of technical and social networks online and offline.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"65 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43003063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"News in the Digital Age: A Case Study of CITE as a Digital Public Sphere in Zimbabwe","authors":"N. Ndzinisa, Carolyne M. Lunga, Mphathisi Ndlovu","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2022.2028647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2022.2028647","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT There is growing scholarship on how social media are shaping the practice and performance of mainstream media organisations. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide journalists with information and sources on issues happening across the globe. Journalists and news organisations are appropriating social media tools to generate story ideas and interact with audiences. Concerns about the quality of information circulated on these platforms and the growing misinformation and disinformation remain, affecting the reputation of mainstream media and digital start-ups. This study investigates the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE), a digital start-up in Zimbabwe, focusing on its role as a digital public sphere in the country’s news ecosystem thus contributing to understandings of the role and importance of the digital public sphere in the Zimbabwean context. Drawing upon the digital public sphere and social constructionism as frameworks for conceptualising digital tools and journalism practice, this research interrogates the role of this digital start-up. We argue that CITE has appropriated and adopted digital tools to transform its news making practice in ways that provide a platform for excluded and marginalised communities.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"46 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45755442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Obituary: Arnold (Arrie) Stephanus de Beer. A Man with a Plan","authors":"K. Tomaselli","doi":"10.1080/23743670.2021.2001761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2021.2001761","url":null,"abstract":"Professor Arnold (Arrie) de Beer (MA RAU; MIJ Baylor; PhD Potchefstroom) was a Professor Extraordinary, Department of Journalism, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research topics included the role of media in South African society, news flow and journalism education. Until 2019 he was a member of the executive committee and African coordinator of the Worlds of Journalism Study, the largest international research project to date. In 1980 he founded Ecquid Novi, now titled African Journalism Studies. He was the editor of Global Journalism (Pearson). A former journalist with Die Burger and Die Transvaler, he edited the Ensiklopedie van die Wêreld before moving to academia in 1974. He was head of the departments of Communication at Free State University and the University of the North-West (Potchefstroom) and acting head at the University of Johannesburg (RAU). He was a member of the early SABC Board during the transition; the SA Media Council; the SA Press Council; the Appeals Committee of the SA Press Ombudsman; and he was a journalism academic representative on the South African National Editors’ Forum. De Beer was a cofounder and president of the South African Communication Association and a Lifelong Fellow. He was a co-founder and executive committee member of the South African Public Relations Institute and an accredited public relations practitioner. He was the first recipient of the Stals Prize in the field of journalism, awarded by the SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns. A visiting scholar at the universities of Washington, Baylor and Indiana-Purdue, he was also a professor extraordinary at the University of the Western Cape.","PeriodicalId":54049,"journal":{"name":"African Journalism Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"179 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44927257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}