Science journalism for development in the Global South: A systematic literature review of issues and challenges

Based primarily on a systematic review of the relevant literature between 2000 and 2017, this paper reflects on the state of journalism about science in developing countries, with a focus on its issues, challenges and implications for their developmental processes and causes. Five major themes emerge from our analysis: (a) heavy dependence on foreign sources, especially the media of the Global North; (b) the low status of domestic science news in newsrooms; (c) uncritical science reporting that lends itself to easy influences of non-science vested interests; (d) tight grips of politics on science journalism; and (e) ineffective relationships between science and journalism. We will demonstrate that, while some of these problems exist in the North, they can have far more severe consequences on the progress of the South, where news plays an almost exclusive role in informing and engaging laypeople with science and its socio-cultural, economic and political implications

New media and journalism practice in Africa: An agenda for research

Special issue of Journalism: theory, practice and criticism 201

When Your “Take-Home” Can Hardly Take You Home: Moonlighting and the Quest for Economic Survival in the Zimbabwean Press.

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 organisations) into their daily work routines as a way of supplementing their poor salaries and surviving the economic challenges facing the country. The study argues that this practice, commonly referred as “moonlighting”, points to the challenges that the material realities of working as a journalist for a poor salary imposes on African journalists. These conditions not only differentiate African journalists from their counterparts in the economically developed countries of the North, but also highlight how the conditions of material deprivation tend to subvert conventionalized notions of professionalism and ethical standards. The paper further contends that moonlighting also articulates the consequences of a restricted media environment in which stories by local journalists that criticize government policy and expose social ills mainly find space in “independent” and foreign news organizations

Newsmaking cultures in Africa: Normative trends in the dynamics of socio-political & economic struggles

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 some light on newsmaking cultures in Africa – the everyday routines, defining epistemologies, as well as ethical dilemmas. The volume digs beneath the standardized and universalised veneer of professionalism to unpack routine practices and normative trends spawned by local factors, including the structural conditions of deprivation, entrenched political instability (and interference), pervasive neo-patrimonial governance systems, and the influences of technological developments. It demonstrates that these varied and complex circumstances profoundly shape the foundations of journalism in Africa, resulting in routine practices that are both normatively distinct and equally in tune with (imported) Western journalistic cultures. The book thus broadly points to the dialectical nature of news production and the inconsistent and contradictory relationships that characterise news production cultures in Africa