Journal of African Media Studies - Political Communication in East Africa, Sept 2020

Kenya’s media landscape has greatly transformed since the reforms of the 1990s, resulting in increased private ownership of media. The relationship between the media, politics and the citizen has been the most affected by these transformations. Using examples from Kenya’s 2017 elections, this article attempts to show how this relationship has changed and the opportunities and challenges for modern political communication. This article argues that although new trends in political communication have resulted in complex and dynamic political campaigns, they have also resulted in the atomization and alienation of the citizen in the democratic enterprise. This analysis is made against the backdrop of the political economy of the media theoretical perspective and, to an extent, emerging literature on media and globalization and attendant forces on the Kenyan society in general.

Climate change is a global risk that has affected all countries, which requires both global and national action. From the domain of scientists, who initially dominated climate debates, climate change has now become a public issue, with politicians increasingly influencing decisions on climate action, thus climate change becoming a highly politicized media topic. Given that media focus on key issues in society, this article examines the positioning of climate change in Uganda’s media as a means of gauging the level of political commitment to translate this global challenge into climate action. Premised within the issue-attention conceptual framework and based on the findings from the analysis of print media coverage in Uganda of the COP21 global summit, the article shows that climate change is not just a local national issue but is inexplicably linked to global frameworks, where voices and actors from the North not only dominate the global climate discourse but also transcend to the national level as reflected in the coverage, with most of the climate news being from foreign sources and foreign political leaders. Journalists are urged to pre-empt the local politicians to be active participants, not passive listeners in the global climate debates, such that climate issues become high on Uganda’s political communication agenda.

The article discusses political activism in Uganda and the role of social media. It focuses on two specific cases, the 2011 ‘Walk-to-Work’ and the 2017 ‘Pads4Girls’ campaigns in order to contribute to better understanding of the ever-evolving dynamic between political activism and the media in such campaigns. A disputed presidential election in 2011 in Uganda prompted opposition politicians to call nationwide protests. The architects of the protests hoped this would eventually lead to the downfall of Museveni’s newly elected government. The ‘Pads4Girls’ campaign on the other hand, was spearheaded by a female academic activist and provoked unprecedented response from politicians across the political divide, activists and unaffiliated individuals who added weight to the campaign. The article’s discussions feed into a broader conversation on the interaction of media and politics in semi-democratic contexts such as Uganda, where attempts to curtail media freedom and freedom of expression are frequent.

The article involves three main topics. The first deals with the role of referendums in relation to constitutional processes, and how they have become increasingly common, with a focus on African developments. The second topic is a description of the referendums in relation to the media coverage of the rejected constitutional change in Zimbabwe in 2000 and in Kenya 2005, and with subsequent elections in both countries shortly after, and then the referendums that accepted constitutional change years later. The last part of the article is an analysis of coverage in the Tanzanian press of the constitutional debate before the aborted referendum in 2015, followed by some comparative reflections on the relationship between referendum and election reporting.

This article identifies the key but common challenges in the regulation of online content in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in East Africa (EA), both in terms of the regulatory challenges and the controversies surrounding government legislative responses to curbing illegal and harmful online content. To address these challenges, the article proposes the incorporation of digital literacy into the existing cyber legislations through content regulation and digital literacy, a new concept geared towards empowering the internet users in EA to be not only aware of the existing content legislation but also develop critical thinking skills and abilities to take action on illegal and harmful online content on a daily basis.

The sociocultural context, in which media advocacy is practised, results in several influential factors that affect its effectiveness, outcomes, and success/failure. The objective of this article is to identify and discuss the sociocultural and political factors for the media advocacy efforts in fighting sexual harassment in Egypt and to evaluate their influence on the campaign’s outcomes. Using the triangulation approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with advocates, media experts and policy-makers. The analysis revealed six influential factors that can inform and improve future media advocacy campaigning. The pivotal factor is ‘focusing events’, which are a golden opportunity due to its effectiveness in getting the attention of various publics and pushing forward the required policy solutions, which is discussed from the agenda-setting lens. Other influential factors include coalition-building, political will, public opinion, the image of advocates, and the influence of social media, which are discussed in further detail.

Digital media have developed to facilitate new forms of engagement with heritage and allow traditional life to showcase its past history, thus potentially broadening interest to a broader landscape of audience. The research responds to calls for a better understanding of cultural expression using digital media by exploring the affordances and utilization of digital forms on users. Also, it is essential to examine the magnitude of the associations. Accordingly, the research analyses the interaction between cultural expressions and digital media use. The aims of the investigation are informed by behavioural theories to add depth and texture. The methodological framework is framed by a survey questionnaire method. The sample size is drawn from undergraduate students at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, using the simple random scheme. The study informs practice, enhances our understanding of digital media while improving user experiences and sheds new insights on self-preservation, values and co-producing heritage assets.