Prophets without Honor: Peripheral Actors in Kenyan Journalism

In sub-Sahara Africa, periphery contributors exist in a liminal space. They are at once valorized and treated with suspicion by the local journalism and political fields. Valorization occurs when they engage with, and challenge, journalism from the global north, and the opposite occurs when they do the same for the local fields. Focusing on the former and not the latter is a disservice to the complicated and nuanced relationship these actors have with the journalism field and perpetuates a mythologized and romanticized narrative about the redemptive qualities of online platforms

Making Human Rights Campaigns Effective While Limiting Unintended Consequences (2017)

In 2016, USAID's Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance launched its Learning Agenda—a set of research questions designed to address the issues that confront staff in USAID field offices working on the intersection of development and democracy, human rights, and governance. This literature review—produced by a team of political scientists, sociologists, and lawyers—synthesizes scholarship from diverse research traditions on the following Learning Agenda question:What are the consequences of human rights awareness campaigns? What makes a human rights awareness campaign successful? Why do many campaigns fail? What are the unintended negative consequences of both successful and failed campaigns? How do local norms and other cultural factors constrain or enable the translation of campaigns from one context to another? This report synthesizes scholarship bearing on these questions from diverse research traditions and assesses the interdisciplinary state of knowledge regarding the effects, both intended and unintended, of human rights awareness campaigns and the characteristics that make such awareness campaigns effective. This review is divided into five sections:A broad overview of the steps involved in designing an effective awareness campaign.A review of research on campaigns generally, drawn from a broad range of fields, such as marketing, communications, public health, and political science.An overview of human rights awareness campaigns specifically, building on the well-known precept that to be successful, human rights campaigns must be adapted to the local context. The authors identify the mechanisms that facilitate and the barriers that impede local adaption, particularly the use of frames. Drawing on framing theory, the report highlights four points in communication where framing is critical: contexts, communicators, targeted populations, and message design.A discussion of effective media strategies, including ways to approach both traditional and new media, with the most effective campaigns combining traditional print media strategies with new social media forms.A discussion of the unintended negative consequences of campaigns, including backlash, confusion, desensitization, and/or frustration among targeted audience. This section also identifies the typical causes of these outcomes and ways to avoid them

Prophets without Honor

In sub-Sahara Africa, periphery contributors exist in a liminal space. They are at once valorized and treated with suspicion by the local journalism and political fields. Valorization occurs when they engage with, and challenge, journalism from the global north, and the opposite occurs when they do the same for the local fields. Focusing on the former and not the latter is a disservice to the complicated and nuanced relationship these actors have with the journalism field and perpetuates a mythologized and romanticized narrative about the redemptive qualities of online platforms

Making News Outside Legacy Media: Peripheral Actors within an African Communication Ecology

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

Making News Outside Legacy Media

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