Mapping Social Media Trajectories in Zimbabwe

This chapter argues that while social media is leading to a great deal of virtual awareness, very little action is taken to end the plight of citizens, thereby weakening the real impact of social media activism. It focuses on opportunities and challenges facing online protests in the wake of growing social media prevalence in Zimbabwe. The chapter presents data collected from face-to-face discussions with members of the Zimbabwean communities in the North East of the UK to determine ways through which digital participation among expatriate Zimbabweans is contributing to both online and offline activism in the Southern African nation. It explores the apparent advantages and disadvantages of using social media platforms. The chapter seeks to demonstrate the real potential of cyberactivism insofar as strengthening or weakening increased online and offline democratic participation of Zimbabwean citizens is concerned

Toward a Theorization of Student Journalism Collaboration in International Curricula

Adopting an international approach to journalism pedagogy, this study reports on the findings of a Global Journalism Collaboration Project involving 267 undergraduate and postgraduate students from Germany, Italy, Kenya, Uganda, Romania, Colombia, and Australia. Over 6 weeks in 2019, students collaborated to produce multimedia news stories on current issues. Using student survey results and written evaluation assessments, we report on the benefits and challenges of international student journalism collaboration. The most significant challenge was differential access to information communication technologies (ICTs) among African partner countries and, using empirical data, we offer a set of “guardrails” for future international student journalism collaboration projects

Data journalism beyond majority world countries:Challenges and opportunities

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This commentary reflects on the state of research on data journalism and discusses future directions for this line of work. Drawing on theory in international development and postcolonial studies, we discuss three critical pitfalls that we encourage future scholarship in this area to avoid. These include using a linear model of progress, in which journalists in Majority World nations struggle to ‘catch up’ to their Minority World counterparts because of the ‘obstacles’ they face; reproducing a simplistic split between the ‘West and the Rest’, thus missing the complex interaction of structures operating at different levels; and failing to examine journalistic agency due to an overemphasis on the technical structuring of the ‘tools’ used in data journalism. We also encourage scholars to engage in more comparative work rather than single case studies; increase dialogic communication between scholarship produced in, or about, different parts of the world; and incorporate more diverse methodologies with the aim of building theory. More broadly, we advocate for greater critical reflection upon—if not the challenging of—our dominant modes of thought in order to build more nuanced frameworks for explaining the complex causes, and potentially mixed effects, of data journalism around the world