Journalism in Africa: New Trends—Guest Editor’s Note

Journalism and Media is pleased to announce the completed edition of this Special Issue, ‘Journalism in Africa: New Trends’. When we launched a call for papers in late 2022, we aimed to probe how scholars are using research to shape new narratives about the direction of journalism in Africa, seeking to obtain new insights about numerous aspects of journalistic performance. This includes the emerging trends concerning press–state relations; journalistic performance and accountability; trust in journalism and journalists; audience engagement or disengagement with journalism; gender dynamics in journalistic production; and the impact of new digital media technologies on journalism.

The nine papers published in this open access journal, re-issued in a reprint edition, attempt to uncover new scholarship on the topics of interest we outlined in our call for papers. While they may not have explored them all, they provide useful knowledge and advance research on the role of journalism and the use of creative expression in the African context.

We invite readers to use the insights gained from this collection of papers as frameworks for future research, deepening our knowledge of journalism’s place in Africa.

The articles in this Special Issue could not have been published without the excellent reviews and careful vetting provided by our many peer reviewers who offered critical and thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscripts; we are grateful for their efforts in the peer-review process. We also extend our gratitude to the Editorial Office of Journalism and Media for managing the peer-review service, manuscript preparation, and publication process; their input was invaluable.

As the Guest Editor of this Special Issue, I would like to welcome you to read the articles published in this Special Issue. These papers have garnered a significant amount of interest since their publication online, judging by their high number of impressions—a testament to their impact on the wider community of scholars on Africa. In this introductory essay, I aim to highlight some key points from this Special Issue, without undermining the insightful work of the authors, for those who may not have the time to read it all in full, hoping to encourage greater engagement with the individual papers. They employ a broad range of methods, including survey research, content analysis, historical research, focus groups, expert interviews, critical reviews, and discourse analysis. Furthermore, they cover a range of different places, with three of the papers about North Africa, four examining West Africa, and one each focusing on West-Central Africa and Southern Africa.

Regarding the papers on North Africa, two concern Egypt and one focuses on Tunisia. The former articles use a mixed-methods approach to address related issues, combining survey research, focus groups, and expert interviews to examine audience engagement, selective attention to news, news avoidance, trust in media, and the implications of the emergent fragmented online digital information ecosphere for news consumption in an authoritarian or transitional political system such as Egypt’s. In Dinana et al.’s (2025) ‘Trust pathways in digital journalism,’ the authors explore several factors contributing to declining trust in journalism and news media. By comparing news consumption patterns in Western and non-Western national Arabic news media and information channels, the study reveals a more nuanced picture of audience engagement and disengagement with news, emphasizing a dynamic interplay of factors. The authors demonstrate that strict state regulatory control of the formal media sector compromises Egyptians’ trust in state narratives churned out by journalists working for state-aligned media. One consequence of this is that Egyptian news audiences exhibit more active selective attention behavior in the ways they consume news narratives, and with the increasing salience of online digital media, more alternative sources of information are emerging in this fragmented media landscape.

Their study also highlights how audiences’ trust in news and how they select it is affected by their awareness of the state’s regulatory control of the media and its influence on narratives about political, economic, and cultural news. Additionally, they investigate how the absence of gatekeeping, the algorithmic curation of news on social media, and trust propensity shape audience behavior in news consumption. For example, while trust is high in Western media platforms, journalists, and civic engagement, in the national media sample, trust propensity and civic engagement are weaker but still positive.

In the related work by Taher and Ismail (2025) on ‘News avoidance and media trust…’, they show how news avoidance may be a complex adaptation behavior to news overload of repetitive overbearing state narratives perpetuated by rigidly controlled state media. They discuss four broad findings: First, this adaption behavior ensures that news audiences are not overwhelmed and suffer cognitive dissonance from news overload in transitional authoritarian systems. Second, the low trust in state-aligned media platforms and journalists is importantly linked to the repetitive and homogenous state narratives they disseminate. This drives Egyptians to seek counter narratives from alternative sources on digital media and encrypted channels outside state control that fit with their objective realities, particularly when state-controlled narratives depart from their lived experiences. Audience engagement with the news and civic engagement and disengagement should therefore be viewed through the lens of selective attention rather than news avoidance as a whole. Third, important demographic, socio-technical, and cultural factors mediate the ways in which Egyptians attend to, consume, and interpret news narratives, showing that younger Egyptians may be more adept at navigating socio-technical constraints such as the impact of algorithmic news, news curation, misinformation, and disinformation. Moreover, it is crucial to understand how family communication patterns affect how people in Egypt interpret news narratives. Fourth, the study provides empirical evidence that the robust digital media environment provides a platform for independent journalists and those that work for state-aligned media channels to creatively publish content outside the rigid control of authoritarian regimes. Citizens tend to be more invested in the public affairs of their countries; as such, independent journalists whose work is available outside state-controlled channels are more likely to engage news audiences when their narratives reflect people’s realities.

In ‘Political listening and podcasting: the case of Tunisia’, Snoussi et al. (2024) explore how online digital spaces, specifically podcasting, can be coopted by an elected leader with authoritarian power to shape the representation of political realities, thus marginalizing the voices of the political opposition. This study conducts a content analysis of political podcasts on Arabic news following the Tunisian President Kais Saied’s dissolution of legislature and assumption of full executive and legislative powers, which prompted an outbreak of mass protests in support of and opposition to the president. This work is particularly significant as Tunisia was the ground zero of the 2010/11 so-called Arab Spring revolution that toppled many autocrats in the Middle East and promised a new era of democratization. For Tunisia, this entailed multiparty elections that resulted in a new parliament, dominated by Islamic-oriented political groupings. The election also ushered in the installation of Saied as President. Barely more than a decade on from this transition, worsening economic conditions and the paralysis of legislature in addressing the needs of the populace were exploited by President Saied.

The authors show how declining political and economic conditions can be taken advantage of by opportunistic leaders with authoritarian tendencies and how they can court sizable support for their political agenda by garnering the backing of political podcasters with large audiences in the burgeoning digital media landscape. The processes observed in the Tunisian case have implications for comparative studies of political podcasting and civic engagement or disengagement with politics in both transitional and established democratic societies around the world. In this case study, the authors document the many tactics employed by podcasters to cultivate audience engagement and both popularize and justify the President’s agenda, such as the use and command of local Arabic and Tunisian dialects, tonality, humor, and other linguistic techniques.

This case reveals how media content producers, including journalists, can be coopted by authoritarian leaders; likewise, Maodza’s study (Maodza, 2025), ‘The independent press and the fall of Robert Mugabe […]’, on Zimbabwe shows that the analog press and their digital offerings are no less immune from manipulative tactics exploited by powerful politicians who seek to use the press to achieve political ends. The study combines field interviews with a framing analysis of political content published in two private Zimbabwe newspapers to expose the shortcomings of the political press in covering the succession battle by politicians within the ruling political party, ZANU-PF. Examining The Daily News and Newsday, two privately owned newspapers, reveals that journalistic norms and professionalism can be undermined by corruption, low wages given to journalists, competitive jealousy, and paranoia within newsrooms. The study confirms that the absence of strong institutional control and oversight, micro factors such as personal characteristics, and the influence of powerful politicians in agenda setting are far more insidious in shaping the reportage of the political press. These effects may be more important than the macro (political, regulatory, and ownership) and meso (organizational routines, training, and newsroom socialization) factors that the press theory literature cites as major aspects of press performance in developing countries.

Abondo Ndo’s article (Abondo Ndo, 2024), ‘Digital shifts and ethno-political dynamics: exploring actor and event designation in the coverage of the Boko Haram terrorism conflict […]’, interrogates press performance, journalistic norms, and the dangers of unbridled journalism in the context of Cameroon, a multiethnic society where identity politics can have a destabilizing effect. The author employs critical reviews, media sociology, discourse, and framing analysis to examine the production of both online digital and print newspaper content in the coverage of the Boko Haram terrorism conflict in Cameroon. Abondo grounds the study in the country’s history, exemplifying how the transformation of both politics and the media landscape over the last 40+ years has shaped the competing narratives observed in the Cameroonian press. Whereas Cameroon’s politics have been mainly controlled by a single political party and the leadership of President Paul Biya (despite attempts at political reforms), the emergence of online digital journalism has made it difficult for the ruling party and state narratives to dominate digital spaces. Without the gatekeeping and strict regulatory control of media content, the coverage of both online digital media and print sites is influenced by identity politics.

The author takes the Boko Haram terrorism issue as a prism to understand how media narratives and commentators on public affairs seek to influence opinion about the conflict, finding that discussions in the online space are far more robust, unrestricted, and likely to imbue ethno-political hatred. In contrast, print media coverage of the conflict is far more restrained and modulated, perhaps because state regulatory measures and the fear of sanctions ensure that journalists abide by standards established by political authorities. For example, the language deployed in the print press is often a means of political signaling that affirms loyalty to President Biya and the ruling party and attacks the political opposition. The coverage also tends to portray the opposition composed of different ethnic groups as either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The counter narrative offered by citizen journalists in the online digital space is no less restrained, virulent, and fractious, thus heightening ethno-political tensions.

The study has some implications for press performance and journalistic production in multi-ethnic societies where unrestrained and unregulated media coverage of political and cultural conflicts can potentially lead to the unraveling of fragile politics. Are there alternatives for press freedom and journalistic practice short of outright press censorship? Is tightening citizen access to online digital media spaces an appropriate policy response to modulating the intensity of ethno-political tensions observed online?

If the Cameroon study exposes the dark side of the impact of journalistic production on politics, the article by Tawiah (2025) offers a more optimistic outlook regarding the use of online digital media for citizen engagement with politics. In his study on ‘social media and campaign strategies, a case study of political issue framing by 2024 presidential candidates in Ghana,’ the author examines how the two major candidates in the presidential election deployed social media to hone their campaign strategies for citizen engagement in three core areas: education, economy, and jobs. The article finds that platform-specific affordances were crucial for citizen engagement and more effective messaging that might have made a difference in the outcome of the election. It argues for campaign strategists to be more thoughtful and creative about how they deploy messages for both audience engagement and persuasion. The findings are in line with other conclusions made about youth and their reliance on social media and other online digital media spaces including Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) and encrypted messaging channels such as WhatsApp.

Although the study is inconclusive about whether social media use for political campaigns leads to electoral success, it offers a basis for future research to build upon.

One of the contradictions in studying journalism and the new digital media in Africa is that there is a lack of studies on the connection between the use of indigenous languages and journalism, media content, audience attention to media fare, and the political environment. Replicating the type of study conducted by Tawiah that examines social media campaign strategies for indigenous language messaging in digital and print media would prove illuminate in this regard. Fosu’s (2024) study on ‘Language choice and the problematics of ideology in the pre and post independent Ghanaian press’ addresses this issue. The author conducts historical research and a meta-analysis of the secondary literature, demonstrating that whereas pre- and post-independent press outlets were key in inspiring nationalism and independence among Ghanaians, the political elite using these platforms belonged to a narrow socio-cultural class fluent in English. Fosu argues that this condition had built-in structural advantages for the emergence of a political and cultural elite that was literate in the command and use of the English language. The study argues that the dominance of the English-language press in the pre- and post-independence eras was a limiting factor for the development of a local language and indigenous press. While English language exhibited a hegemonic relationship with elite access to power in the post-independent state, a local language and indigenous press could have broadened political participation and mobilized non-English speakers in the discourse of national development. Fosu reminds us that ‘If Ghanaians, and Africans for that matter, want their languages to develop, they must promote the use of their languages in their press and other social contexts.’ This observation is crucial given the debate in the development literature about the role of language in forging innovation and sustainable development.

The last two papers in this reprint are case studies on Nigeria. The first concerns journalistic practice in using a law on freedom of information to improve journalistic performance. The second provides insight into the use of artivism or creative expression as counter narratives to state propaganda and resistance led by demonstrators, most of them youths, against repressive and violent police tactics.

In ‘Knowledge and use of the Freedom of Information Act in Nigeria,’ Eze (2024) found that knowledge and the use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), passed into law in 2011, was very high amongst Nigerian journalists. The study uses survey research to reveal that journalists with high levels of knowledge in this regard are more likely to use the provisions of the law to obtain information about data, policies, and other issues that government officials may want to keep from public knowledge. Journalists with FOIA-related skills are also likely to utilize the provisions of the law to further develop their investigative reporting. Despite the law, government officials are usually obstinate in attempts to block the release of information sought by journalists.

The study also delineates how journalists in developing media systems can best utilize open access laws such as the FOIA to improve press reportage. In the case of Nigeria, the author notes that journalists and their professional associations were the main actors in lobbying for the passage of the freedom of information law. Once passed, unions of journalists partnered with non-government civil liberty groups to offer specialized training on details of the legislation and teach journalists about employing the law to improve their reporting for democratic accountability.

Finally, in Afolabi and Gabriel’s (2025) ‘Soro Soka: A framing analysis of creative resistance during Nigeria’s “NSARS” Movement in 2020,’ the authors use framing and discourse analysis to show how art was deployed as forms of creative resistance to dismantle state narratives by youth-led protesters. The demonstrations were against the violent tactics of a special anti-robbery police squad that was accused of indiscriminate extrajudicial killings. The squad was also implicated in many acts of unlawful detentions and using violent tactics against youths.

Afolabi and Gabriel’s study demonstrates how different art forms such as paintings and visual art, songs, totemic imagery, dramatic sketches and skits were utilized in both physical spaces and online digital media to highlight grievances against the police squad. Through creative expression, the demonstrators also countered state propaganda that attempted to delegitimize the protesters.

The article is part of a larger global social movement that leverages digital media technologies to use creative forms of expression, aiming to mobilize protests in the street against social injustice, oppose oppression and dramatize grievances against the state.

Other examples cited include the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement in the USA; the Umbrella Protesters in Hong Kong (China); and the Polish Women’s protests. These cases illustrate the power of artivism as forms of creative expression to amplify the voices of protesters, counter state narratives, publicize grievances, and draw global attention to social injustice. In these struggles, art becomes a platform for those who are excluded from elite privileges.

We hope this collection provides depth to the scholarship on journalism in Africa, focusing on new trends in journalism that deserve further exploration.