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Training Community-Based Journalists for Climate Change Reporting: Lessons from South Africa

Brett Cohen, Leonie Joubert

Journal of Sustainability Education, volume 23, issue April (2020), 11 pp.

"Reporting to the public on climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation requires journalists to be equipped to engage with a wide range of technical content in order to communicate it in an accessible and engaging way. Recognizing the need for journalists from a wide range of backgrounds, inc ... more

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Routledge Handbook of Environmental Journalism

David B. Sachsman, JoAnn Myer Valenti (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), xx, 421 pp.

"An increasing number of media platforms - from newspapers and television to Internet social media networks - are the major providers of indispensable information about the natural world and environmental risk. Despite the dramatic changes in the news industry that have tended to reduce the number o ... more

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Media Freedom in South Africa Today: Unravelling Multifarious Threats toward a Research and Advocacy Response

Julie Reid, Glenda. Daniels, Kate Skinner

Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, volume 46, issue 3 (2020), pp. 1-19

"This article assesses the multiple factors which are barriers to media freedom in South Africa. These include crises of financial sustainability of the media sector which have recently been compounded by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; widespread job losses in journalism; and harassment and phy ... more

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Gazing Past the Glass Ceiling: Indian and South African Female Journalists’ Perceptions of Their Role and Power in the Newsroom

Shakuntala Rao, Ylva Rodny-Gumede

Global Media and Communication, volume 16, issue 1 (2020), pp. 57-74

"This article analyses female journalists’ perceptions of their own role, their power in the newsroom, their influence over the news agenda and the challenges they face on a daily basis in two large media-saturated countries and emerging democracies, India and South Africa. India and South Africa ... more

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Media Practices and Changing African Socialities: Non-Media-Centric Perspectives

Jo Helle-Valle, Ardis Storm-Mathisen (eds.)

New York; Oxford: Berghahn (2020), 250 pp.

"Deriving from innovative new work by six researchers, this book questions what the new media's role is in contemporary Africa. The chapters are diverse - covering different areas of sociality in different countries - but they unite in their methodological and analytical foundation. The focus is on ... more

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Schwerpunkt: Meinungsfreiheit

welt-sichten, issue 2 (2020), pp. 12-31

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Keeping it Real: An Exploratory Study of How 13-14-Year-Olds Critically Engage with Online Content
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Tim Schoot Uiterkamp et al.

Free Press Unlimited (2020), 43 pp.

"We recruited participants aged 13-14 in three countries: Mexico, South Africa and the Netherlands. Through a questionnaire, an observation exercise and interviews, we gathered information in order to identify trends [...] We constructed a number of global personas that cut across the groups. Safety ... more

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Perceptions of cyber bullying in primary and secondary schools among student teachers in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa

Liezel Cilliers, Willie Chinyamurindi

Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC), volume 86, issue 4: e12131 (2020), 10 pp.

"Cyber bullying has become a topical issue among school learners in South Africa. However, there is very little guidance for schools on how to deal with cyber bullying from the South African Department of Basic Education. This study investigated the perceptions of cyber bullying in primary and secon ... more

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The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media
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Katie Ellis, Gerard Goggin, Beth A. Haller, Rosemary Curtis (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), xxvi, 423 pp.

"An authoritative and indispensable guide to disability and media, this thoughtfully curated collection features varied and provocative contributions from distinguished scholars globally, alongside next-generation research leaders. Disability and media has emerged as a dynamic and exciting area of c ... more

Communicating Science: A Global Perspective
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Toss Gascoigne, Bernard Schiele, Joan Leach, Michelle Riedlinger, Bruce V. Lewenstein, Luisa Massarani, Peter Broks (eds.)

Canberra: Australian National University (ANU) Press (2020), xi, 982 pp.

"This collection charts the emergence of modern science communication across the world. This is the first volume to map investment around the globe in science centres, university courses and research, publications and conferences as well as tell the national stories of science communication. How did ... more

The Missing Perspectives of Women in COVID-19 News: A Special Report on Women’s Under-Representation in News Media
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Luba Kassova

Gates Foundation (2020), 101 pp.

"This report was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to examine women’s representation in COVID-19/coronavirus newsgathering and news coverage in India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK, and the US. It is rooted in a computational news content analysis of 11,913 publications an ... d 1.9 million stories between 1st March and 15th April 2020 undertaken by Media Ecosystems Analysis Group; an in-depth qualitative portrayal analysis of 175 highly ranked COVID-19/coronavirus stories across the six countries; quantitative analysis of eight public-facing bespoke Google surveys, as well as multi-country secondary surveys; a pronoun content analysis of COVID-19 headlines; story frames analyses using Google’s news search engine, the Internet TV News Archive in 2020 and the GDELT Project global online news archive for 2017 to 2020; and interrogation of a number of global statistical databases [...] The report has examined the news coverage of the COVID-19/coronavirus story through the lenses of three indicators of gender equality: women as sources of news expertise; news stories leading with women protagonists; and coverage of gender equality issues. The insights from the report have led to the creation of 21 recommendations which aim to support news providers who wish to amplify the substantially muted voices of women in news coverage of the COVID19/coronavirus story. The report has uncovered a substantial bias towards men’s perspectives in the newsgathering and news coverage of this pandemic across both the global north (the UK and US) and the global south (India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa). This bias operates against a backdrop of women’s effective political invisibility within the COVID-19-related decision-making process in the countries analyzed and the unique socioeconomic, health and psychological challenges that women face globally. Every individual woman’s voice in the news on COVID19 is drowned out by the voices of at least three, four, or five men. The women who are given a platform in the COVID-19/coronavirus story are rarely portrayed as authoritative experts or as empowered individuals but more frequently as sources of personal opinion or as victims/people affected by the disease." (Executive summary) more

Women and News: An Overview of Audience Behaviour in 11 Countries
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Meera Selva, Simge Andi

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2020), 43 pp.

"This report [...] presents a bespoke analysis of how women around the world consume and perceive news, based on data on audience behaviour from 11 countries featured in the 2020 Reuters Institute Digital News Report: Kenya, South Africa, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Finland, Germa ... more

Fighting Violence Against Women Online: A Comparative Analysis of Legal Frameworks in Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda

Chioma Nwaodike, Nerissa Naidoo

Internews;Pollicy (2020), 25 pp.

"The highest levels of regulation, from international treaties to constitutions, are unambiguous about creating an environment in which women thrive. However, this egalitarian space must be progressively realized, and one aspect of this work is eliminating discrimination, including in relation to ge ... more

The Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Rights in Africa

African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms Coalition (2020), 297 pp.

"This publication is a compilation of 19 articles by African researchers, academics, journalists and human and digital rights activists on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital rights in Africa. The articles were commissioned by the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms (AfDec ... ) Coalition as part of its project on “Securing human rights online in Africa through a strong and active ‘African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms’ network”. The AfDec Coalition is a pan-African initiative which promotes human rights standards and principles of openness in internet policy formulation and implementation on the continent, guided by the 13 principles established in the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms. At the time that the papers were commissioned, in June 2020, African states had either invoked existing policies or adopted new policies for prevention of spread, containment and treatment of the virus that had an impact on the enjoyment of digital rights. For example, most governments employed the use of contact tracing applications to track and trace citizens’ movements and put in place measures criminalising free speech when it contained false information about the pandemic. These two examples had the potential to be abused, particularly the latter, which was used to silence journalists and government critics. The pandemic also moved most citizens’ communication, education, work, trade and access to basic services from physical interactions to primilary online interactions. However, the continent is still largely made up of informal economies, has a low internet penetration rate of 28.2% (far below the global average of around 53%), and has seen an increase in reports of digital rights violations resulting from repressive cyberlaws, making the efforts to address the pandemic inadequate and inequitable. These articles offer reflective analyses on government efforts to curb the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of the AfDec principles, with a focus on a number of the principles including privacy and personal data protection, gender equality, freedom of expression, internet access and affordability, and the right to development and access to knowledge." (Introduction) more

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Media Literacy in a Disruptive Media Environment

William G. Christie, Belinha S. De Abreu (eds.)

New York: Routledge (2020), 338 pp.

"This book, part of the BEA Electronic Media Research Series, brings together top scholars researching media literacy and lays out the current state of the field in areas such as propaganda, news, participatory culture, representation, education, social/environmental justice, and civic engagement. T ... more

The South African Social Media Landscape: Social Media Myths, High Walls and Controlled Data

Sandton (ZA): Ornico (2020), 62 pp.

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Kaboom! Of Stereotypes and Superheroes - African Comics on Africa;Von Stereotypen und Superhelden - Afrikanische Comics und Comics zu Afrika
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Corinne Lüthy, Reto Ulrich, Antonio Uribe (eds.)

Basel; Frankfurt am Main: Basler Afrika Bibliographien;Namibia Resource Centre & Southern Africa Library;Brandes & Apsel, 2nd. ed. (2020), 156 pp.

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Applied Theatre and Sexual Health Communication: Apertures of Possibility

Katharine E. Low

London: Palgrave Macmillan (2020), xxv, 323 pp.

"This book analyses the partnership between applied theatre and sexual health communication in a theatre-making project in Nyanga, a township in South Africa. By examining the bridges and schisms between the two fields as they come together in the project, an alternative way of approaching sexual he ... more

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