Journal of African Media Studies - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2022

What is the public perception of investigative journalism in Africa? This article seeks to examine the public perception and challenges facing investigative journalism in Africa. It uses the case of an investigative journalist called Anas from Ghana whose works have sought to expose corruption in the country and the continent. The article adopts a mixed-method approach that relies on descriptive, quantitative research design (basic numeral) based on an online survey from June to July 2019 (n = 208 respondents) and an in-depth analysis of existing literature. The objective of this study is to interrogate the role of journalists in combating corruption, a vice that continues to pose a serious threat to justice and development in many societies. The authors find that investigative journalism is attractive to many citizens but faces serious challenges that undermine its effectiveness. The article concludes with a set of recommendations that can further strengthen the practice of investigative journalism.

This study considers the representation of western nations in Nigerian newspapers. It is conceived as a response to western media portrayal of African nations, which has received extensive research attention. The outcome of this substantial body of research points to a negative representation of developing nations, which are characterized by poverty, violence and instability. However, little or nothing exists on the counter-representation of western nations in the African media, and this is the focus of our research. To this end, we employ quantitative content analysis to identify the tone and theme of the representation of western nations in two newspapers based in Lagos, Nigeria. Our findings show that, although the tone of western representation in the Nigerian media is complex, it is largely negative, and the theme focuses on the political and global power of western nations. We contend that this pattern of representation reflects the existence of structural imperialism, particularly in the news reports of Nigerian newspapers, almost all of which were dubbed from international news agencies. This leads us to argue that the representation of western nations in Nigerian newspapers indicates the existence of borrowed lenses, with implications for the construction of knowledge on regional and global affairs.

In Zimbabwe, media activists have used several strategies to prise open the media space. The emergence of media policy reform activism (MPRA) in the last decade of the twentieth century in Zimbabwe has transformed media policies in several ways. However, the strategies of activism and the extent to which these strategies have influenced media policy transformation have not been adequately researched. Thus, using in-depth interviews with some MPRA under the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ), the government, other media policy stakeholders and documentary analysis, this study examines the strategies used to impact media policy reforms and the extent to which the strategies have influenced the policy reform process. The study established that media reform activists in Zimbabwe use numerous strategies to open media systems. Nonetheless, there is a standoff between MAZ and the state over several issues which include but are not limited to the source of funding and ideologies.

Via content analysis, this study investigates the visual portrayal of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea in US newspapers during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Salience of identified frames and tone is assessed relative to findings identified in existing literature. Data were collected from the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Dallas Morning News. Findings suggest coverage did not favour victim-only frames, relative to other types of frames, whose visual tone became marginally less negative once Ebola patients were in the United States. Such results contribute to literature regarding African media studies, public perception of foreign affairs and press coverage of international health epidemics.

This article examines the coronavirus pandemic against a burgeoning culture of post-truth in social media. The theoretical narrative reviews the social media cum post-truth epoch and identifies network fluidity of the medium, absence of gatekeepers, tempering of human thinking with machine thinking, and supremacy of alternative facts over truth as basic ingredients that oil-free reign of manipulative and propulsive forces of coronavirus’ conspiracy theories, forged news, tricky data, and disinformation. The article asserts that as the bubbles of post-truth swear up in the online media, conned objectivity and rationality are conjured to stimulate strong sentiments capable of making individuals uphold wrong beliefs about coronavirus. The study suggests the use of human actions in managing coronavirus information rather than surrendering it to machine-based computational procedures. It recommends the teaching of media literacy in African schools to moderate the consumption of information in a world suffused with infodemics.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has unravelled the significance of having robust communication structures about health and disease to dynamic societies. The need to construct a mutual understanding of health issues has become imperative, and achieving a universal understanding of the disease burden requires robust information-sharing processes which can easily surmount the barriers to communication. What is challenging, however, is to communicate in a way and in a language that the majority of the population understands. In Malawi, where the majority of the population (84 per cent) live in rural areas, and without access to information technologies, it becomes more challenging when devising messages that should reach such hard-to-reach populations. This therefore begs the question: how effective is the COVID-19 communication to the Malawi public domain? This article attempts to answer this question by discussing the language choice vis-à-vis the lingua-cultural needs of the masses in COVID-19 awareness, and the strategies and modes of communication in COVID-19 communication. In view of this, the article argues that the government communication strategies concerning COVID-19 were not entirely effective. The article notes that the use of English in most of the COVID-19 messages has excluded the majority and has perpetuated the attitude of perceiving COVID-19 as a disease for the rich people. The modes being used in communicating COVID-19 do not effectively reach the masses since the media penetration is minimal resulting in most Malawians getting second-hand information and developing myths and conspiracy theories. The article concludes that it is imperative for Malawi to devise a contextually appropriate framework for communicating complex health messages.