Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara - Participatory Journalism in Africa: Digital News Engagement and User Agency in the South

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 professional practices emerging with journalists direct interactions with readers and sources via online user comment spaces and social media platforms. Using a social constructivist approach, the book focuses on the challenges relating to the elite-centric nature of active participation on the platforms, while also highlighting emerging ethical and normative dilemmas. The authors also point to the hidden structural controls to participation and user engagement associated with artificial intelligence, chatbots and algorithms. These obstacles, coupled with low digital literacy levels and the well-established pitfalls of the digital divide, challenge the utopian view that in Africa interactive digital technologies are the sine qua non spaces for democratic participation.

This is a valuable resource for academics, journalists and students across a wide range of disciplines including journalism studies, communication, sociology and political science.

Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara (PhD) teaches media and international journalism at the University of Glasgow, UK, where he is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. He is Associate Editor of Journalism Studies and African Journalism Studies, and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburgs Faculty of Humanities. His most recent publication is the edited volume Newsmaking Cultures in Africa (2018).

Admire Mare (PhD) is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head in the Department of Communication at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, Windhoek, Namibia. He is a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburgs Faculty of Humanities. He currently leads the international research project Social Media, Misinformation and Elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe (SoMeKeZi) funded by the Social Science Research Council (20192021).

Series editor: Bob Franklin

Disruptions refers to the radical changes provoked by the affordances of digital technologies that occur at a pace and on a scale that disrupts settled understandings and traditional ways of creating value, interacting and communicating both socially and professionally. The consequences for digital journalism involve far reaching changes to business models, professional practices, roles, ethics, products and even challenges to the accepted definitions and understandings of journalism. For Digital Journalism Studies, the field of academic inquiry which explores and examines digital journalism, disruption results in paradigmatic and tectonic shifts in scholarly concerns. It prompts reconsideration of research methods, theoretical analyses and responses (oppositional and consensual) to such changes, which have been described as being akin to amomentof mind-blowing uncertainty.

Routledges new book series, Disruptions: Studies in Digital Journalism, seeks to capture, examine and analyse these moments of exciting and explosive professional and scholarly innovation which characterize developments in the day-to-day practice of journalism in an age of digital media, and which are articulated in the newly emerging academic discipline of Digital Journalism Studies.

Participatory Journalism in Africa

Digital News Engagement and User Agency in the South

Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara and Admire Mare

Disrupting Investigative Journalism

Amanda Gearing

Journalism Education for the Digital Age

Promises, Perils, and Possibilities

Brian Creech

For more information, please visit: www.routledge.com/Disruptions/book-series/DISRUPTDIGJOUR

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

2021 Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara and Admire Mare

The right of Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara and Admire Mare to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Names: Mabweazara, Hayes Mawindi, 1977- author. | Mare, Admire, author.

Title: Participatory journalism in Africa : digital news engagement and user agency in the south / Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara and Admire Mare.

Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Disruptions: studies in digital journalism | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020053779 | ISBN 9780367197292 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429242908 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Online journalism--Africa, Sub-Saharan. | Journalism--Technological innovations--Africa, Sub-Saharan. | Citizen journalism--Africa, Sub-Saharan.

Classification: LCC PN4784.O62 M33 2021 | DDC 076--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053779

ISBN: 978-0-367-19729-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-00213-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-24290-8 (ebk)

Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara:
For my partner, Chengetai

Admire Mare:
For Evelyn (Grace Chipo) and Akudzweishe (Kuku)

Although we have only a very limited space here to make acknowledgements for assistance, there are several people who have contributed to the realisation of this book in countless ways, large and small we are deeply thankful. It is difficult to see how this book would ever have materialised without the astounding generosity and patience of the Disruptions book series editor, Professor Bob Franklin. Beyond extending the invitation to contribute to the series and his belief in our suitability to write the book, we are permanently indebted and thankful for the endless deadline extensions, constant prodding and dogged determination to see the project come to fruition. Bobs strong conviction in the need to balance scholarly accounts, geopolitical contexts and voices in efforts to understand the multiple complexities of contemporary disruptions in journalism a major impetus behind the writing of this book is without doubt one of his major contributions to a field he has worked exceptionally hard to develop and champion.

It is undeniable that a project of this nature inevitably benefits from the support of those most directly affected by the time and attention it demands to complete. Much of this book was written at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic and during the excruciatingly difficult lockdown period. Hayes would like to express his heartfelt thanks to his wife, Chengetai and sons, Tanaka and Nyasha for their deep sacrifices, enduring support, patience and encouragement throughout the writing of the book. Their names may not be on the cover of the book, but they gave so much that this work is equally their own. Thanks are also due to colleagues within the Glasgow University Media Group and the Digital Societies Research Group, who have equally been a source of inspiration and invaluable insights, albeit unbeknown to them Catherine Happer, Greg Philo, Alison Eldridge, Catriona Forrest, Bridgett Wessels, Andy Hoskins, Justine Gangneux, and many others. The conversations we have had across seminars, meetings and in the corridors of Adam Smith Building during normal times are silently weaved into some of the chapters and sections of this book. Matt Dawson, Head of Sociology at the University of Glasgow has been exceptionally supportive in many ways than can be summed up here. Thank you for fostering an invigorating and collegial working environment.