Call for papers, Special Issue of Digital Journalism: ‘Digital Technologies and the Evolving African Newsroom’
Guest Editor: Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara, University College Falmouth, UK
(Digital Journalism Editor: Bob Franklin)
African newsrooms are (as elsewhere) experiencing the disruptive impact of new digital
technologies on the way they generate and disseminate news. Indeed the influences of
digitization, Internet, mobile communications and social media are changing the
informational needs of citizens, and newsrooms (along with their journalists) are being
forced to adapt in various ways. There are clear dimensions (however small) of internal
newsroom creativity and adaptations to the digital revolution. African journalists are “far
from being mired in ‘backwardness’ or
passively awaiting external salvation in regard to
attempts to use [new digital technologies]. Nor are they lacking when it comes to critical
perspectives with [the technologies] and global information networks” (Berger 2005, 1).
However, there are very few studies that have sought to capture the impact of digital
technologies on the daily routines of African journalists, especially in their ‘natural habitat’ –
the newsroom (Paterson and Domingo 2008).
This special issue of Digital Journalism seeks to provide a forum for scholarship that
attempts to ‘de-westernise’ scholarly accounts of how traditional journalism is adapting to
the impact of new digital technologies. It seeks submissions that interrogate and closely
examine how African journalists are forging new ways of practising journalism in the context
of technological changes in their newsrooms (and the wider context of news production),
including the challenges and normative dilemmas emerging with these developments. The
issue welcomes research papers that detail trends, practices and emerging cultures of the
adoption and appropriation of new digital technologies by newsrooms (and journalists)
across the continent.
It will especially accommodate theoretically driven studies that draw on empirical evidence
to provide insights into how traditional journalism in various corners of Africa is adapting to
the increasingly digitized context of practice. It will consider methodologically innovative
papers, (particularly those that deploy qualitative approaches and insights) to offer rich
