This timely book explores how the internet and social media have permanently altered the media landscape, enabling new actors to enter the marketplace, and changing the way that news is generated, published and consumed. It examines the importance of citizen journalists, whose newsgathering and publication activities have made them crucial to public discourse and central actors in the communication revolution. Investigating how the internet and social media have enabled citizen journalism to flourish, and what this means for the traditional institutional press, the public sphere, and media freedom, the book demonstrates how communication and legal theory are applied in practice.
The smartphone and social media have transformed Africa, allowing people across the continent to share ideas, organise, and participate in politics like never before. While both activists and governments alike have turned to social media as a new form of political mobilization, some African states have increasingly sought to clamp down on the technology, introducing restrictive laws or shutting down networks altogether. Drawing on over a dozen new empirical case studies – from Kenya to Somalia, South Africa to Tanzania – this collection explores how rapidly growing social media use is reshaping political engagement in Africa. But while social media has often been hailed as a liberating tool, the book demonstrates how it has often served to reinforce existing power dynamics, rather than challenge them. Featuring experts from a range of disciplines from across the continent, this collection is the first comprehensive overview of social media and politics in Africa. By examining the historical, political, and social context in which these media platforms are used, the book reveals the profound effects of cyber-activism, cyber-crime, state policing and surveillance on political participation.
Over a decade ago, when Nigeria's migratory digital elite in the United States pioneered a newfangled form of citizen online journalism that disrupted the professional certainties of domestic legacy journalism, the country's professional journalists held out hope that the disruptive effect of this insurgent, non-professionalized, non-routinized but nonetheless transformative form of journalism would be transitory. But diasporic citizen online journalism is not only now an integral part of Nigeria's media ecosystem, it has also inspired successful homeland digital-native emulators and is challenging, even supplanting in some cases, traditional domestic media formations as sites of consequential democratic discourse. With Nigeria's frenetic and deeply engaged social media scene, diasporan citizen journalism, homeland news, and social media activism are merging to create the most energetic moment in Nigeria's media history. This book chronicles the emergence and transformation of Nigeria's diasporic citizen journalism from the margins to the mainstream of the country's journalistic landscape and draws parallels with the mainstreaming of alternative media formations in other parts of the world. Farooq A. Kperogi is Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA. He is a columnist for the Nigerian Tribune and blogs at https: //www.farooqkperogi.com/
Journalism, Democracy, and Human Rights in Zimbabwe provides an empirical analysis of Zimbabwe’s ongoing state of affairs. Bruce Mutsvairo and Cleophas T. Muneri examine the intersection between journalism, democracy, and human rights to historicize and critique past successes and failures that have played out in Zimbabwe’s past, as well as interrogate future challenges that await the nation’s quest for democratization. The authors examine what role citizen journalists, human rights activists, professional journalists, and social media dissents could potentially play toward ending the country’s current adversity. Scholars of journalism, media studies, communication, African studies, and political science will find this book particularly useful.
This book investigates the role of citizen journalism in railroading social and political changes in sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies are drawn from research conducted by leading scholars from the fields of media studies, journalism, anthropology and history, who uniquely probe the real impact of technologies in driving change in Africa.
Using digital tools such as YouTube and Twitter, ordinary people are collecting and sharing news that might otherwise never get reported. What does this trend mean for professional journalism and, ultimately, for democracy? The chapters include examples of citizen journalism from Britain, Burma, Canada, Iran, Kenya, Palestine, Taiwan, and the United States.
Less than a decade after the advent of democracy in South Africa, tabloid newspapers have taken the country by storm. One of these papers -- the Daily Sun -- is now the largest in the country, but it has generated controversy for its perceived lack of respect for privacy, brazen sexual content, and unrestrained truth-stretching. Herman Wasserman examines the success of tabloid journalism in South Africa at a time when global print media are in decline. He considers the social significance of the tabloids and how they play a role in integrating readers and their daily struggles with the political and social sphere of the new democracy. Wasserman shows how these papers have found an important niche in popular and civic culture largely ignored by the mainstream media and formal political channels.
It is in Mauritius that the first newspaper of the African continent was published. Annonces, Affiches et Avis Divers was created in 1773 by the French administration for the islands of Mauritius and Reunion. Since its independence from Britain in 1968, Mauritius has known a very rich media history with an impressive number of publications and a relatively good level of press freedom. However, many challenges remain. Confrontational episodes in the relationship of the local media with the political sphere, the rise of sensationalist journalism, increased concentration of ownership in the industry as well as market uncertainties have taken their toll on a profession which often prides itself in the defence of freedom of speech and democracy. The media conference jointly organised by UNESCO and the University of Mauritius in 2010 offered a singular opportunity - the first time ever in Mauritius - for media practitioners, regulators, lawyers, politicians, academics and civil society to discuss the state of the media as part of the country's democratic systems. Media roles and functions, the legal and regulatory framework, self-regulation, market issues and new trends such as citizen journalism were thoroughly examined. This book brings together papers and conclusions from that conference. Whilst much ground has been covered especially since the emergence of private radio stations, much still needs to be done to move towards a true media democracy. The book points to media governance, access to information, training of and professionalism among media practitioners as areas of unfinished business. This is an invaluable contribution to on-going debates about press regulation, liberalisation of electronic media, new forms of journalism, continuous training and professionalization in Mauritius.
While transitioning from autocracy to democracy, media in Africa has always played an important role in democratic and non-democratic states; focusing on politicians, diplomats, activists, and others who work towards political transformations. New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa addresses the development of new mass media and communication tools and its influence on social and political change. While analyzing democratic transitions and cultures with a theoretical perspective, this book also presents case studies and national experiences for media, new media, and democracy scholars and practitioners.
This book probes the vitality, potentiality and ability of new communication and technological changes to drive online-based civil action across Africa. In a continent booming with mobile innovation and a plethora of social networking sites, the Internet is considered a powerful platform used by pro-democracy activists to negotiate and sometimes push for reform-based political and social changes in Africa. The book discusses and theorizes digital activism within social and geo-political realms, analysing cases such as the #FeesMustFall and #BringBackOurGirls campaigns in South Africa and Nigeria respectively to question the extent to which they have changed the dynamics of digital activism in sub-Saharan Africa. Comparative case study reflections in eight African countries identify and critique digital concepts questioning what impact they have had on the civil society. Cases also explore the African LGBT community as a social movement while discussing opportunities and challenges faced by online activists fighting for LGBT equality. Finally, gender-based activists using digital tools to gain attention and facilitate social changes are also appraised.
