Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara

• Falmouth University

The last two decades or so have seen a shift in the way in which many media scholars talk about ‘bread and butter’ topics of media research and analysis in transitional democracies of the Global South. Age-old phenomena, including media ownership, media manipulation, bias, censorship, clientelism, and patronage are now increasingly discussed as a s...

Although the generic meaning of ‘media capture’ coalesces around the instrumentalization of the media by vested economic or political interests, its manifestations as seen across chapters in this volume are diverse and contested. In this chapter, we explore ‘cognitive capture’, one of the deeply contested but under-researched pillars of capture tha...

Within the context of Nigeria’s multiculturalism, the operations of the press revolve around the dynamics of political, economic, and ethno-regional contestations for power which impact the discourse it anchors on national issues. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Cultural Discourse Studies (CDS) as the research methods, this study unders...

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 qu...

This book offers an African perspective on how news organisations are embracing digital participatory practices as part of their everyday news production, dissemination and audience engagement strategies. Drawing on empirical evidence from news organisations in sub-Saharan Africa, Participatory Journalism in Africa investigates and maps out profess...

The rapid proliferation of the mobile phone in Africa has often been celebrated in deterministic ways that blindly eschew the stark and intricate realities associated with the challenges of the ‘digital divide’. Equally, very little attention has been paid to the sophisticated ways in which citizens (in association with mobile phone operators and m...

This introductory essay argues for a decolonial approach that privileges qualitative methods in ways that position African digital experiences as “epistemic sites” of knowledge production in their own right in digital media scholarship. In proffering this argument, we challenge and confront elements of the global knowledge system, which are driven...

This essay is an interpretive qualitative analysis of secondary data that explores and/or highlights the intricacies of “media capture”, relations of patronage and clientelist media practices in sub-Saharan Africa. It adopts an exploratory approach that delineates the contours and patterns of debates around these intricately connected phenomena by...

Dominant narratives about the contemporary problem of “fake news” and cyber-propaganda have focused on how its evolution and manifestation has been closely linked with the rise of populist politics, digital capitalism, the transformation of the public sphere and structural weaknesses of liberal and mainstream media. These narratives often use the W...

This special issue examines the intricacies of journalism practices, policies and media regulation in contemporary Africa. The studies carried in the issue collectively offer three broad contributions to (African) journalism studies. First, they demonstrate how law and regulation are used to control and, in some cases, stifle the practice of journa...

Since colonial times, journalists in Africa have developed a relatively common set of values underpinned by Western ideas on presenting news (in a detached, transparent and supposedly objective manner) that enables citizens to exercise their citizenship and democratic rights. This commitment to objective factual news inevitably ignites a constant c...

This book contributes to a broadened theorisation of journalism by exploring the intricacies of African journalism and its connections with the material realities undergirding the profession on the continent. It carries theoretically driven studies that collectively deploy a wide range of evidence to shed light on newsmaking cultures in Africa—the...

Using empirical data from in-depth interviews with journalists drawn from across the Zimbabwean mainstream press, this chapter examines how the Zimbabwean economic and political context has, over the years, nurtured an environment in which journalists ‘illicitly’ incorporate extra paid work (for other news organizations) into their daily work routi...

This chapter seeks to shed some light on how researchers can examine the fluid and multisited appropriations of digital technologies in African newsrooms. Taking Zimbabwean and Mozambican newsrooms as research laboratories, the study argues that the deployment of new digital technologies by journalists should be seen as shaped and constrained by lo...

This short article attempts to chart a research direction for exploring, among other issues, questions of structuring, appropriations and transformation through a combination of personal impressions, research and theoretical observations driving debates on the new media and journalism practice in Africa and beyond.

Work placement opportunities in the United Kingdom are coming under increasing scrutiny in the delivery of journalism degree courses as students focus on employability and industry connections as a measure of value for their money. However, there are challenges around the approaches to take in delivering effective work-based learning across higher...

The permeation of digital technologies into social practices, including journalism has posed significant challenges to our understanding of what really counts as ‘ethnographic’. However, there is consensus among researchers that ethnography inscribes a particular relationship between the researcher, the researched, and the context of research. Spec...

Using qualitative data drawn from in-depth interviews with journalists, this study investigates how leading print newsrooms in Zimbabwe are adapting to the wave of changes spawned by readers’ comments on their websites. It specifically examines how newspaper journalists are handling the “new” context in which strangers contribute and respond direct...

Using a qualitative research approach, this study examines the appropriation of digital technologies and their implications for the reception of the so-called ‘pirate’ radio in Zimbabwe. It specifically explores how the use of the Internet (and its associated digital technologies), including the mobile phone by two prominent ‘underground’ radio sta...

While new digital technologies offer mainstream journalism in Africa (and elsewhere) alternative opportunities to engage and deliver content to their audiences, few studies have explored their disruptive implications to the practice of the profession. This study thus confronts the normative dilemmas and challenges facing Zimbabwean print journalism...

This article uses an ethnographic case-study approach to investigate the deployment of the mobile phone by Zimbabwean mainstream print journalists in the dynamics of their daily professional routines and practices. The study’s theoretical and conceptual framework draws on social constructivist approaches to technology and the sociology of journalis...

This article examines newsmaking practices and professional cultures in the Zimbabwean press. It explores the extent to which journalists make independent professional choices in the context of organisational, occupational, and wider contextual demands that shape and promote specific newsmaking cultures. The paper argues that the country's polarise...

Evaluating the Popularity of the Zimbabwean Tabloid uMthunywa A reader acceptance survey in Bulawayo in the heart of Matabeleland Although observers often accuse Africa’s tabloid newspapers of compromising normal journalistic functions and depoliticizing readers, few have attempted to theorize the reasons for tabloids’ rapid growth and popularity....

This article examines the challenges of deploying ethnography to study the fluid and dispersed processes of ICT use in journalism practice. It draws on the author’s ethnographic field experience in Zimbabwean mainstream newsrooms. The article specifically focuses on the practicalities of deploying ethnography to study the fluid and diffuse processe...

This article is a qualitative study of the consumption of uMthunywa, a Zimbabwean state-controlled tabloid newspaper. It focuses on its Bulawayo readers, who constitute the bulk of the paper's readership and particularly explores the meanings and relevance of its content to their everyday lives. The study establishes that the paper constitutes a fo...

While the tabloid press in Africa has often been criticized for undermining the normative functions of journalism and depoliticizing readers, there has been little attempt to theorize the reasons for its rapid growth in popularity. Drawing on qualitative research methods, principally qualitative content analysis and indepth interviews, with Bulaway...