Widely available media information technologies have spawned an unprecedented growth of lively debates on journalistic performance today. Indeed Web 2.0 technologies like blogs have attracted a huge participation of citizens to engage inscrutiny of content and operations of the traditional media. As a result, journalists and media organisations are now daily targets of a barrage of criticism—including insults—over poor quality of journalism. At the same time, traditional accountability instruments like the press councils are increasingly losing their significance as focus shifts to reforms on traditional media regulation as seen in the UK’s Leveson inquiry of 2011-2012. It is perhaps the reason there has been a growing body of research on participatory media regulation—greater involvement of citizens in traditional media accountability (see for instance, Fengler et al, 2014 on the EU-funded MediaAcT project). However, empirical studies on the new phenomenon—participatory media accountability—have so far been few and limited to the West. Additionally, researchers are surprisingly already celebrating the possibility of having a greater role for citizens in media accountability although among journalists this participation is still being treated with scepticism, according to Fengler et al. This study focuses on the effect of participatory media accountability through criticism by bloggers commenting on journalists’ performance in Kenya. It will involve interviews with newspaper journalists in Kenya with the aim of establishing if criticism on high-trafficblogs run by Kenyans affect their performance positively or negatively.

Today, in a variety of digital spaces, many critics and criticisms of the media exist side by side with journalistic actors and content. This dissertation explores the complex relationships between criticisms and actors who define journalistic practice and accountability of the media. The main theoretical argument is that scholars thinking about the ways journalistic actors legitimise criticisms should consider the discursive positioning of the critic (motives and expectations), the evaluative issues (subjects of criticism), corrective (re)action (what journalists do after criticism) and finally, the digital resource (the input of digital technologies and their logics). To interrogate this theoretical proposition, the study employs qualitative interviews with 57 respondents—journalists, media accountability agents and critics—in Kenya and South Africa, and offers a comparison of the two contexts.

The results show that for journalists to navigate critical discourses in a digital discursive ecology, they a.) identify the most prominent critics in digital spaces, who play an expository role – acting as interpreters to discourses and buffer against incivility, and b.) they mostly employ delegitimising activities that mark professional boundary work in digital spaces, for example, through blocking offensive criticisms and actors from their personal spaces. The digital discursive ecology in which these discourses exists present tensions to professionalism that challenge journalistic authority. Journalists are pushed to conform to the logics of digital spaces, and further social actors online impose their norms on journalistic discourse. In general, the findings show journalistic ambivalence towards digital media critics, as well as a measured engagement with criticisms considered legitimate. There is a nascent discursive struggle among journalists and critics in digital spaces, whose results are overt or subtle corrective (re)actions among journalists that suggest transformed practice. This research contributes to the field of journalism by providing nuance to configurations that exist between journalistic actors and digital media critics as a result of the constant production of metajournalistic discourse in digital spaces today.

The overall aim of this study is to interrogate the motives for the consumption of homeland media by immigrants. The special focus is to investigate whether cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) drives the consumption of homeland media by Somali immigrants living in Sweden. Every year more and more refugees from war-torn Somalia settle in Sweden, where they have become the largest community of Africans in Sweden. However, in settling in the Nordic country, the immigrants have had to grapple with an urge to maintain their identity as they face challenges such as integration and discrimination (Kleist, 2008). Even in their attempt to deal with new challenges, by integrating into the Swedish society by learning the Swedish culture and language, they have maintained the ‘old ties’ to their homeland in Somalia (Hiller & Franza, 2004) through the consumption of homeland media channels such as Radio Shabelle (via the internet) and Universal TV (satellite network).

It is the ‘old ties’ to the homeland by immigrants that has been a subject of substantial research in migration studies (see for instance, Hiller & Franza, 2004). The studies have focused on various dynamics such as everyday life, construction and sustenance of identity, acculturation as well as media use.  Additionally, as an interesting area in audience research, studies into media consumption have attempted to throw light into how migrant communities satisfy their communication needs mostly based on the standard theory of uses and gratifications (Scherer, 2008). Consequently, the spotlight has been fixed on ethnic or ‘diasporic media’ (Georgiou, 2006) and how it sustains identity and culture (see Longhurst, 2007; Morley, 2007; Sinclair & Cunningham, 2000).

However, there has been little research on consumption of homeland media and particular motives that drive individual immigrants to engage in this practice. This study appreciates the significance of the vast research on culture and identity in diasporic studies but moves further to focus on the individual immigrant in the social space and the benefit(s) derived from this specific media consumption practice. This study therefore investigates the nature of the relationship between homeland media consumption by Somali immigrants in Sweden and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, based on interviews with immigrants aged between 21 and 40 years in Sweden.

Bloggers criticizing the traditional media over poor quality journalism are being touted as potentially influential instruments of media accountability. This paper questions whether in retrospect the old order of media accountability still has relevance in an increasingly networked media environment. The aim of the paper is to suggest a framework for understanding how bloggers criticizing the traditional journalism practice can be examined in a study on media accountability in the digital era. The essay interrogates the concept of media accountability and the significance of bloggers’ criticism on journalism practice.

The primary research question for this project is: What are the implications of the growing online citizen criticism of journalistic performance on media accountability as understood in journalism studies today?Recent studies show that the influence of traditional media regulatory frameworks, such as the press councils, is increasingly waning and their effectiveness in regulation of journalism performance is being questioned (see Fengler et al 2014; Leveson 2012). In fact, MediaAcT1 (Media Accountability and Transparency) research, recommend that citizens who criticise the traditional media should be integrated into media accountability processes (Fengler et al). Indeed, citizens on social media and blogs often elicit interesting debates on journalistic performance by pointing out errors in traditional media content or even unethical practices of journalists. It is the reason the discourse on media accountability studies today focuses on the question whether citizens could become effective ‘watchers of the watchdog’ through legitimate criticism of the journalism profession. Even so, although journalists seem to be aware and keep track of media criticism online (Pole & Rehkopf 2012; Joseph 2011), there is still little understanding on whether issues raised by citizens are legitimate and pertinent to the journalism practice. But even with the exploratory work of MediaAcT—that expanded Hallin and Mancini's (2004) conception of media systems—there are still few studies that have examined the viability of citizen criticism online as a potential media accountability mechanism as well as its impact on journalism performance. The specific question whether media criticism has a transformative value on journalism practice is still widely unresearched, especially in journalistic cultures beyond the connected West yet there are claims that “the effects are already visible” in news media (Powell & Jempson 2014, 126). This project therefore will examine the influence of citizen criticism online on journalism performance. The research will focus on newspaper journalists as well as critical content on blogs and social media in order to evaluate media criticism as a potential media accountability mechanism in Kenya and South Africa. The conceptual framework that lays a basis for this study is participatory media accountability (as conceptualised in the seminal work of Bertrand, 2000) and media criticism (see for example Carey 1974; Marzolf 1991; Wyatt 2007). This methodological focus for this comparative study will be based on mixed methods. The project will employ a content analysis of media-critical content on blogs and Twitter whose criticism is focused on the mainstream newspapers in Kenya and South Africa. The outcome from the content analysis will be the basis for semi-structured interviews with 30 journalists in each of the two countries.

Popular criticism of legacy news media is argued to have the capacity to influence journalistic practice and subsequently keep journalists accountable. Scholars give prescriptions of the kinds of criticisms journalists need, if they are to be kept accountable to journalistic norms and values, but this has not been matched with perspectives of journalists. Following in-depth interviews with 24 practising journalists in Kenya and South Africa, the study found that although journalists treat fairness, facts and positiveness as “good” attributes of media critique, they are more inclined towards criticisms that show an understanding of news processes.

As a global body with a mission to deliver justice to humanity, the International Criminal Court (ICC) inspires an interesting discourse in cosmopolitanism studies. Arguably, it is the ICC that puts to effective practice moral cosmopolitanism (Pierik and Werner, 2010). Indeed, when the global court produces a TV series targeting local populations in Sub-Saharan Africa, it interestingly shifts the spotlight to an area that has taken an overtheoritical nature over the years—the relationship between the media and cosmopolitanism. Potentially illuminating empirical studies in this area have been few, Western-centric and limited to the paradigm of the reception of distant suffering. This paper empirically examines the influence of media texts on audiences. Inspired specifically by Ask the Court—a TV programme on YouTube on the trial of Kenya’s president, his deputy and a journalist over electoral violence in 2007-2008—this exploratory study questions whether the Hague-based court has a role in “cosmopolitanization” (Beck, 2006). Indeed, the questions guiding this research are: What are the manifestations of cosmopolitanism in the programme? Does the programme influence the audience to have a ‘cosmopolitan awareness’ of global justice? The results of the study are based on a textual analysis of a selection of Ask the Court episodes and a subsequent survey of a cross-section of audiences of the programme in Kenya.

Research has paid relatively little attention to two aspects that are increasingly important in understanding data journalism as a maturing field: (a) journalism today is increasingly provided by a diverse set of actors both inside and outside of legacy media organizations, and (b) data journalism has become a global phenomenon that cannot be fully grasped within national contexts only. Our article brings both of these aspects together and investigates the roles and practices of peripheral actors in European and African contexts. We engage with research on the role of non-profits and civic technologists in journalism to interrogate further the entanglements between civic technology organizations and data journalism. Following in-depth interviews with 29 practitioners of data-driven non-profits in Europe and Africa, we conclude that practices and roles of these non-profits in relation to journalism are similar, but transcultural and contextual influences shape how they complement or expand data journalism.

The prominence of “fake news” today has sparked an open challenge to the legitimacy of traditional news media. As a result, a series of independent data-driven organisations are emerging to fact-check legacy news media as well as other news sources. This study examines how these actors advocate and adopt journalistic practice and the perceived impact they have on news journalism. We draw our data from in-depth interviews with 14 practitioners working in three organisations—Code for Africa, Open Up and Africa Check—that are currently leading major data and fact-checking operations in sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings show that while these non-journalistic actors are at the periphery of news media as institutions, their operations, activities and goals are at the heart of journalistic discourse. In their data strategies, they emerge as data advocates and activists seeking to reformulate fact-checking processes within news media.

Should regional context overshadow theoretical contributions of a doctoral dissertation or an international journal article? In this essay, we argue that expendable region-centricism diminishes the contributions of Majority World Countries to the media and communication discipline. We propose that 'de-contextualized' studies - which accentuate the theoretical, conceptual, or methodological import of research - could complement current efforts to decentre knowledge.

This article will interrogate the question whether a collective identity of a new Pan-Africanism is emerging through social media in Africa. The study focuses on the use of the hashtag IfAfricaWasABar by Twitter users across the continent in July 2015. It will entail a qualitative content analysis of tweets that were accompanied by #IfAfricaWasABar to analyse the issues raised by African Twitter users as regards their identity. #IfAfricaWasABar was started by Motswana author Siyanda Mohutsiwa and was trending for several weeks in different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The hashtag called upon Twitter users across Africa to satirize the Western media narrative of Africa as a country by coming up with hilarious lines that imagine the continent as a bar, which has interesting characters who in real life would define the continent's culture, politics and social life.

Studies of Twitter use for expression of identity in Africa are few although there has been a marked increase of citizen participation on this social media platform (Portland Communications, 2012). Twitter has indeed turned into an interesting platform for deliberation and daily conversations among citizens. Such kinds of citizen engagement are turning out to offer an interesting forum for jokes as well as serious social and political discussion for discourses that appeal to citizens across the continent, who are both online and offline. In fact, in their recent study on the use of Twitter by Kenyans, Tully and Ekdale (2014) conclude that 'playful engagement' on Twitter is spurring significant deliberation as users "infuse developmental agendas in their comments, actions and interactions" (p.68).

The article will argue that more than offering a platform for deliberation, Twitter as a new media technology in Africa is enabling African citizens to recreate an African identity in the global space. It will seek to revive the old debate on Pan-Africanism and its expressions on media space, which has so far been overshadowed a process of globalization. It will further trace and discuss the discourses in the nexus of Pan-Africanism, identity as well use of Twitter in Africa. The article will pose the question whether through Twitter, a "New Pan-Africanism" is emerging, where ordinary citizens rather than elites determine how Pan-Africanism should be defined and expressed on global space.        

Pan-Africanism, a concept that attempts to capture the essence of being an African, needs to be reconsidered in the age of interactive social media. In this chapter, we look at how Twitter users negotiate the question of African identity through humourous hashtag-driven conversations. We specifically interrogate the question whether a new kind of Pan-Africanism is emerging on Africa’s Twitterverse through the use of a popular hashtag in 2015, #IfAfricaWasABar. In our analysis of tweets linked to #IfAfricaWasABar, we conclude that Twitter provides temporary solidarity by engaging users in humorous exchanges about socio-cultural, political and economic issues that define the African continental condition today. 

Pan-Africanism, a concept that attempts to capture the essence of being an African, needs to be reconsidered in the age of social media. In this article, we examine how Twitter users negotiate the question of African identity through humorous hashtagdriven conversations. We specifically question whether a new kind of Pan-Africanism is emerging on Africa’s Twitterverse through the use of a popular hashtag in 2015, #IfAfricaWasABar. In our analysis of tweets linked to #IfAfricaWasABar, we conclude that Twitter provides temporary solidarity by engaging users in humorous exchanges regarding the sociocultural, political and economic issues that define the African continental condition today.

In order to conceptualize the ways in which data is permeating journalism practice, practitioners and researchers often focus on the instrumental value of data and its incorporation in existing journalistic processes. Data journalism and its many manifestations attempt to make use of databases – usually open data but also large sets of leaked documents – as a form of reporting by applying data analysis and new forms of data visualization as a storytelling technique. However, while the need for more 'scholarly narratives' of data journalism is being acknowledged, literature on the subject still focuses on models and examples in the West.

Indeed the focus on data-driven practices in North America and Europe are valid and illuminating on the new developments in journalism today, but they confine this emerging area to the old problematic of Western-centricism. Accordingly, the role of cross-cultural research, especially in the neglected Global South, is increasingly being acknowledged. We therefore argue here that there is need to integrate fresher perspectives and a broader overview of the wide range of uses of data by news organizations in journalistic cultures beyond the West.

This paper aims to map emerging data-driven practices and evaluate how they are shaping news journalism in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Departing from the theoretical epistemological and emotional implications of the datafication and affective turn of journalism, we conceptualize the context-specific underpinnings of data journalism while mapping the use of data in African nations. To do so this paper draws its empirical data from two case studies of 'continent-wide' data-driven projects: Code for Africa and Africa Check; as well as several ‘country-specific’ examples of data journalism. Here we study the instrumental uses of data, the actors that participate in the process of acquiring and selecting data, as well as the interactions and output within the media systems in Africa.

Our preliminary results show that while data journalism in African nations is still at its infancy, there are examples of sophisticated and widespread use of data journalism in some English-speaking countries in Africa. Additionally, we see a salient participation of Western third-party organizations offering data services to news media organizations, heralding a celebratory rhetoric of data as an empowering tool to hold to account those in power. Hence, apart from the visualization of data and the storytelling techniques, the most prominent use of data in journalism is that of a “watchdog” function. An activist approach to data, serving as a fact-checking tool against governments and other media organizations, seems to be context-specific. Data however are seldom problematized in terms of origin, quality, or degrees of openness.

This paper contributes to the existing body of literature on data journalism by expanding the study of data journalism beyond the Western perspective. We do so by mapping how data journalism manifests in Sub-Saharan African countries while taking into account the context-specific socio-cultural media system. Furthermore we conceptualize the notion of activist data journalism that advocates for the use of data as a fact-checking device and an empowering tool against the ruling power structures.

Existing studies show that Twitter has become an appropriate tool for journalists to share

breaking news, network, connect with sources or to brand themselves and their news

organizations. However in using Twitter journalists have to contend with their conflicting

professional and private identities (Holton & Molyneux, 2015). In this paper, we return to this

debate by interrogating the question whether journalists assert themselves in terms of their

gender identities especially when the national discourse on gender equity is pervasive. We

examine Twitter use by journalists during the 2017 elections in Kenya with a special focus on

female journalists who constitute one-third of the number of journalists in the country (Ireri,

2015).

Major constitutional change in 2010 set a one-third gender threshold for representation in

government and politics in Kenya. Consequently, media discourse surrounding gender has

focused on representation of women in politics and the institutionalization of gender parity in the

Kenyan society. With a slow reform pace and male-dominated politics, civic organizations, media

professionals and social movements have intensified gender campaigns, particularly during

election periods. In the run-up to the 2017 general election, for example, there have emerged

movements that seek visibility offline and online in a bid to change attitudes of Kenyans “rooted

in a patriarchal cultural system” (Kareithi, 2013, p. 266). One example is the 2017 Twitter

campaign against political TV talk shows dominated by male panellist (or ‘manels’).

The pervasive gender discourse during elections puts female journalists at the centre of

constant conflicting demands to promote their professional roles as well as project their voice in

a national discourse on gender. In fact, their journalistic work exposes them more to pressure

from civic organizations, political parties and gender activists as well as growing Twitter

communities [recent studies show Kenyan Twittersphere is one of the most vibrant in Africa

(Portland-Communications, 2015)].

We will track and analyse tweets from a sample of 20 male and female journalists on

Twitter from four media outlets in Kenya over a period of two months preceding the Kenyan

general election in 2017. By analysing Twitter profiles, sourcing, retweets, news stories shared and

whether their tweets carry opinion, we aim to deepen the understanding of how Kenyan

journalists utilise Twitter in election times and whether there are distinct female and male

practices. We expect to find disparities between the content male and female journalists post,

and that female journalists are more assertive about national gender discourses. The expected

contribution of this paper is in discussing journalists Twitter use during elections and the

implications of a gender discourse that puts to test the professional and personal identities of

journalists.

Afropolitanism, sometimes described as ‘cosmopolitanism with African roots’, today exists on the pillar of ‘digital mobility’ (Gehrmann, 2016). In fact, in the discourse of Afropolitanism it is argued that the internet creates online communities that “subscribe to Afropolitan values and culture” (Abebe, 2016, para 4). These communities or their expressions of these values and cultures online have however not been subject of much research. The aim of this study is to reassess the debate of the ‘existence’ of an Afropolitan identity and investigate the role of Facebook groups in promoting (or undermining) the construction of an Afropolitan identity. We particularly explore the debate on ‘black natural hair’ on Facebook groups and trace the manifestations of Afropolitan identities through the discourses inspired by the ‘natural hair movement’ on these platforms. The natural hair movement rallies black women to abandon hair-straightening chemicals and embrace their natural African beauty. In ‘going natural’, African women in today’s globalized world could be argued to contest the “victim identity” (Mbembe, 2007) and project their hair (or hairstyle) as a symbol of their connection to African cultures and values. To explore the manifestation of Afropolitan identity, we employ digital content analysis in tracking the key defining terms of the debate around ‘black natural hair’ on Facebook groups. Our preliminary findings show commercial agenda and national politics define the discourses of ‘black natural hair’ while obscuring subtle expressions of Afropolitan identity

Much has been written about the production and textual features of international media portrayals of Africa, but very little about how audiences on the continent perceive such coverage. This study fills this gap by investigating a campaign led by Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) to challenge CNN's portrayals of their country. Our analysis of the most prominent tweets, images, and users reveals the various strategies adopted by Kenyan audiences to criticize Western representations. This criticism, we argue, constitutes a form of metajournalistic discourse, which should not be reduced to a single story of digital empowerment. While contesting long-standing stereotypes and inequalities shaping global media narratives, this criticism recreates an image of Kenya aligned with a corporate project of nation branding that uplifts the voices and perspectives of digitally connected Nairobi-based elites. In response, we call for greater consideration of the interplay of global and local power relations in which such digital practices are embedded.

From the 1980s, international organizations have devised strategies to develop national media systems to make them more diverse and inclusive so as to both exhibit and preserve local cultures. However, these strategies have not always been successful since information has become a commodity, because the interests of private actors prevent equal access to communication rights. This article outlines a perspective on media development from a rights-based approach, derived from a critique of dominant perspectives from international organizations with a strong focus on technology provisions. The article argues for media development based on the right to communication as an alternative to commodification of information. Through examples from Brazil and Kenya, the article illustrates that viewing communication as a basic right can lead to the inclusion of more voices in the public discourse. In addition, a model for media development is proposed, suggesting that the state and national civil society play a significant role in promoting diverse national public spheres.