Digital Technologies and the Evolving African Newsroom

Towards an African Digital Journalism Epistemology

Hayes Mabweazara

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138823839
• eBook ISBN: 9781317584315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

African newsrooms are experiencing the disruptive impact of new digital technologies on the way they generate and disseminate news. Indeed, newsrooms are being forced to adapt in various ways and there are clear dimensions of localized creativity and adaptations by journalists to the digital revolution. In the same way, the influences of digitization, Internet, and social media are changing the informational needs of readers, including how they engage with news. These developments nonetheless remain on the margins of 'mainstream' journalism research – very few researchers have sought to qualitatively capture the implications of developments in digital technologies on the routine practices of African journalists, especially in their 'natural habitat', the newsroom.

In this light, this edited volume interrogates the changing ecology of newsmaking in Africa in the context of rapid technological changes in newsrooms as well as in the wider social context of news production. It brings together six contributions drawn from five countries: Egypt, Mozambique, South Africa, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, to explore practices, challenges and professional normative dilemmas emerging with the adoption and appropriation of new technologies. While the studies point to dimensions of localised new technology appropriations as defined by the complex socio-political structures in which African journalists operate, they are not rigidly confined to Africa. They are expressly in dialogue with theoretical observations largely emerging from Western scholarship. In this sense, the book goes beyond simply mainstreaming African perspectives, it engages directly with dominant theoretical observations and offers a point of departure for developing what could loosely be branded as an African digital journalism epistemology.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

INTRODUCTION

‘Digital technologies and the evolving African newsroom’: towards an African digital journalism epistemology

Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara

Introduction

Research into the impact of new digital technologies on African journalism is scarce. In particular, very little is known about the influence of digitisation, the internet, mobile communications and social media on the daily routines and practices of journalists in their “natural habitat”—the newsroom (Paterson and Domingo 2008). This gap in empirical research has often resulted in scholarly conjectures that, among other things, seek explanatory frameworks in the uneven distribution and use of technological resources between the economically developed North and the poor South. The resulting discourses invoke the “digital divide” as the default explanatory framework—seen by many as a chasm that prevents journalists in Africa from “drinking at the fount” (Berger 2005) of the unfolding digital revolution. Thus, African journalism is seen as being “in deficit as regards the emerging global information order” (Berger 2005, 1). The dominant discourse, as Berger further contends, is that “some of us have arrived in the land of plenty; the rest lag behind, empty-handed and hopeless, and urgently need to play catch-up or even leapfrog” (2). In short, “when seen in comparison with the First World, there are indeed shortcomings and a dire need for catch-up in [Africa]” (1). While this sense of backwardness aptly relates to setbacks associated with the realities of “access” to digital technologies, it also connects to the complexities and contradictions connected to the “localised” diffusion and permeation of digital technologies in African newsrooms. Collectively, these challenges, as Berger argues, inform much thinking about Africa in the global “Information Society”, and often project an image of helpless journalists, who operate in conditions well below the purported level of their colleagues in the global North.

Yet, despite these challenges and prevailing assumptions, there is no denying the fact that African newsrooms (as elsewhere) are experiencing the disruptive—somewhat cataclysmic—impact of new digital technologies on the way news is generated, disseminated and consumed by their audiences. There are clear indications that a number of countries on the continent have functioning new technology facilities and indeed dimensions of internal newsroom creativity and adaptations to the digital revolution (however small) are emerging (see Accone 2000; Chari 2009; Berger 2011; Mabweazara 2011; Mudhai 2011; Mabweazara, Mudhai, and Whittaker 2014). Digital technologies are changing the informational needs of citizens and newsrooms (alongside their journalists) are being forced to adapt in various ways. As Berger (2005, 1) puts it: African journalists are “far from being mired in ‘backwardness’ or passively awaiting external salvation in regard to attempts to use [digital technologies]. Nor are they lacking when it comes to critical perspectives [towards the technologies]”. Accone (2000, 69) similarly submits that despite challenges, “African journalists should hardly be viewed as second class Net-izens. They have moulded Internet tools to suit their specific needs, devised ingenious technical solutions to overcome the idiosyncrasies of their situations, and continue to apply the medium [effectively in various contexts]”. Nyamnjoh (2005, 4) concurs, arguing that African journalists are determined to be part of the technological revolutions of the modern world and “the way forward is in recognising the creative ways in which [they] merge their traditions with exogenous influences to create realities that are not reducible to either but enriched by both”.

While efforts at assessing the changes spawned by the influence of new digital technologies are emerging, as noted above, a number of the studies tend to extrapolate “the experiences of a limited range of countries and regions to assume universal relevance” (Wasserman 2010, 10). What is particularly lacking are detailed qualitative explorations of how newsrooms (and their journalists) are adjusting to the new digital context of practice, as well as an understanding of the structure of the ensuing transformations from an African perspective. As Obonyo (2011, 1), rightly advises us, “there are unique peculiarities that demand that Africa isolates what is relevant and place it in Africa’s unique situations, and weave out of that mosaic a framework that reflects Africa’s reality”. We, therefore, need to confront questions about whether “African circumstances and contexts provide new … insights that can extend the broad body of knowledge” (du Plessis 2012, 123) about journalism in “the digital era”. In addition to this, we need to examine how those African circumstances and situations provide sufficient ground for the development of uniquely African experiences and perspectives on the impact of digital technologies on traditional journalism.

Towards an African Digital Journalism Epistemology

The research gap noted above has resulted in sustained dependence on Western theoretical and empirical constructs, which, in many cases, have little or no correspondence to the concrete and material realities of African journalists (Atton and Mabweazara 2011; Mabweazara et al. 2014). Most African journalists, as Paterson (2014, 259–260, emphasis added) observes, operate in multifaceted conditions “where news production is sometimes strikingly similar to what might be seen in any global news hub … and, conversely, sometimes distant from Northern norms in terms of its goals and methods”. In the same way, as Kupe (2004) further notes, most African journalists work with significantly fewer resources. They have a lower status, are poorly paid and operate in multicultural countries that are at various stages of constituting themselves as nations in a globalising world. These contextual complexities and contradictions tend to be overlooked, consequently resulting in superficial and considerably anachronistic articulations of what developments in digital technologies actually mean for the practice of traditional journalism on the continent. This, as Ibelema (2008, 36) contends, has meant that professional norms and practices that emerge from Western social “processes are applied out of context, sometimes awkwardly” in the African context. Yet, even when “[t]heories and empirical studies developed in the West might appear to be applicable to the African context, … a closer look shows significant differences requiring nuanced theorising and research” (Atton and Mabweazara 2011, 668), especially given that much of the research is “conducted in splendid oblivion of conditions in [Africa]” (Berger 2000, 90). The studies have “evolved without incorporating the realities of Africa” (Obonyo 2011, 1) and hence covering only a small portion of the problems and situations that face African journalism. It is in this context that Nyamnjoh (1999, 15) avers that African journalism research must be located “in African realities and not in Western fantasies”.

What we, therefore, need in addressing the research lacuna noted above, is a contextually rooted conceptual approach that enables us to maintain sensitivity to the unique professional and social dynamics in which African journalists operate. Thus, in exploring how African newsgatherers are adapting to the “vagaries” of the digital revolution, “we must acknowledge the complexity of the social context of news production and [avoid] the reductionistic idea of fixing news-making at one point along a circuit of interactions” (Mabweazara 2010, 22). In this sense, this special issue seeks to inspire and demonstrate sensitivity to the contingent nature of the interface between new digital technologies and traditional journalism practice in Africa by countering “technicist” approaches, which tend to extricate technologies from the social context of their deployment. As Conboy (2013, 149) reminds us, “Technology, in isolation, has never made journalism better or worse … [It] does not drive change. It has to adapt to the patterns of cultural expectation within particular societies at specific moments in time”.

Accordingly, in examining how African newsrooms are adapting to the digital era, we should acknowledge the fact that technology by itself is not a relevant explanatory variable of emerging practices. Rather, we need to recognise both the rapidly changing technological aspects as well as the complex set of interactions between new technological possibilities and established journalistic forms. Thus, “[a]n assessment of journalism and technology needs insight from both the practice of journalism as well as well as a general awareness of broader cultural trends and how technology forms part of social history” (Conboy 2013, 149, emphasis added). In the same vein, the adoption and deployment of new digital technologies should be viewed as part of a complex social and institutional matrix, which stretches across a wide range of social institutions. The lines separating different technologies from one another and from society should thus be seen as relative and contingent upon a prevailing social consensus (Marx 1997).

This “calls for non-reductionist approaches that are sensitive to the complex interplay between multiple elements” (Mabweazara 2010, 22) at play in the everyday context in which new digital technologies are used in African newsrooms. Therefore, in seeking to understand how African journalists are adapting to the new digital era, we should not overlook the varied contextual influences—social, cultural, political and economic factors—“which lie outside journalism itself and indeed outside of any absolute consideration of the quality of journalism’s products” (Conboy 2013, 149). All of these factors will help to shape and constrain the appropriations of new digital technologies. This line of thought relates to consistent calls to “de-Westernise” African media and communications research by examining and recognising the creative ways in which African journalists seek to harness, within the limits of pervasive “structural constraints …, whatever possibilities are available to contest and seek inclusion” in the digital era (Nyamnjoh in Wasserman 2009, 291).

While a number of leading scholars have called for radical Afrocentric approaches to de-Westernising journalism studies (see Kasoma 1996), this themed issue is informed by a moderate heuristic approach that emphasises foregrounding the realities or contexts in which African journalists operate. To use Ngomba’s (2012, 166) words, the issue “circumnavigates” radical Afrocentric discourses of de-Westernisation by accommodating (and in some cases modifying) Western theoretical approaches in ways that offer “contextually relevant extensions of [the] theories” to help frame our understanding of the impact of new digital technologies on traditional journalism in contemporary Africa. This approach leads to alternative understandings that foreground “localised” factors rooted in the antithesis of technological determinism—the social constructivist approach to technology. At the heart of this alternative perspective is sensitivity to the complex multi-dimensionality of elements of determinism (Dahlberg 2004) by paying attention to the “cultural and relational milieu” (Hays 1994, 66) (the deeper social, cultural, political and economic factors) at play in the deployment and appropriation of new technologies by African journalists.

This conceptual posture acknowledges the fact that the uses of technology take place in socially structured contexts, and as Thompson (1988, 368, emphasis added) reminds us, the first phase of cultural analysis should strive to “reconstruct [the] context and examine the social relations and institutions, the distribution of power and resources, by virtue of which this context forms a social field”. Thus, in seeking answers to the impact of digital technologies on African newsroom, we need to look at African journalism in context—its culture, institutions, the broader communication environment—and examine how these collectively provide insights that can enable us to develop what we might loosely brand as an African digital journalism epistemology. This stance “allows us to view the use of new digital technologies by journalists as a multifaceted experience that can be evaluated against the backdrop of the local … factors” (Mabweazara 2010, 25). As Obieng-Quaidoo (1986) contends, socio-cultural, political and economic aspects are central to any attempt to understand African journalism. With this awareness in mind, we can critically examine how new digital technologies are transforming newsmaking practices, and the ways in which they are being incorporated into the everyday lives of journalists, which inadvertently mediate the processes of adoption and use of new technologies. This sensitivity to context further helps to define African journalism in the digital era as well as position it in “the universals that are deaf-and-dumb to the particularities of journalism in and on Africa” (Nyamnjoh in Wasserman 2009, 287).

It is, however, important to highlight that while the emphasis on context is key here, Africa as a continent is not a homogenous landscape with a collective singular identity. It is, in fact, “a culturally, politically and economically … fragmented society … There are many Africans, both fitting stereotyping but simultaneously defying uniform description” (Obonyo 2011, 4, emphasis added). As Obonyo further contends, North Africa is more closely aligned to the Middle East than to the wider Africa. “It engages less in scholarship terms with the rest of the continent” (2). Consequently, conversations about Africa invariably consider Africa south of the Sahara. But even here disparities informed by “language and colonial experiences make it somewhat of a challenge to make sweeping statements” (2). There are wide discrepancies between Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone Africa and indeed within each of these regions. For example, South Africa stands apart from the rest of English-speaking Africa; its “media infrastructure is [predominantly well-funded, with excellent newsroom infrastructure hence] markedly different from the rest of the continent” (2).

In proposing the approach articulated above, as argued elsewhere, I am not “suggesting a localised research agenda of separatism” (Atton and Mabweazara 2011, 670), or falling into the “seductive perils of ‘essentialism and ahistoricism’” that have characterised a number of non-Western alternative theoretical discussions in journalism and media research, rather the premise is that “where ‘Western’ theories appear relevant and promising … African scholars should nei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: ‘Digital technologies and the evolving African newsroom’: towards an African digital journalism epistemology
• 2. New Media Technologies and Internal Newsroom Creativity in Mozambique: The case of @verdade
• 3. Social Media and Community Radio Journalism in South Africa
• 4. Readers Comments on Zimbabwean Newspaper Websites: How audience voices are challenging and (re)defining traditional journalism
• 5. Negotiating Convergence: “Alternative” journalism and institutional practices of Nigerian journalists
• 6. The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Three Egyptian Newsrooms
• 7. Journalists’ Twitter Networks, Public Debates and Relationships in South Africa
• Index