Current Projects

STORIES BEHIND OUR FOREIGN NEWS is a video research project on how news is produced on, and in, ‘Africa’ and the implications of global news flow for social change.

The research is framed by a key question: do international news discourses and systems of representation create and sustain some of the very conditions for, and realities of, the ‘stories’ that are reported?

The research will focus on four case studies of participant-journalists who work at the extreme ends of news production on the continent: a roving white western stringer; a locally based West African citizen or ‘camjo’ journalist ; a Southern African newspaper journalist working with a commercial media organisation; an East African journalist with a ‘development’ focused news agency.

Using ethnographic and reflexive video research techniques the project will comparatively and contextually explore the differences in daily life, cultural and professional practices of different types of journalism; the structures of news production; the role of news values and news agendas; the range of voices and representations; the importance of diverse journalism and information sources to civic society and human development.

The project aims to identify problems, solutions and spark public debate. The video research and edited outputs will:

1.Increase media literacy by critically engaging diverse audiences in Northern and Southern countries with the issues around global, national and local news flows and problems of news media representations.

2.Support ‘communication for development’ by raising the profile and importance of African journalists, highlighting their role in public interest reporting and their undervalued potential in international news coverage.

3.Generate a set of policy recommendations based on the evidence.

Key research questions include:

- How do international and local-regional produced news and imagery represent and create ‘Africa’?

- What news agendas are operating today on the continent?

- Are African citizens getting the information and analysis they need?

- Are the Northern public aware of what news they are consuming, how it is produced and how it shapes their perceptions?

- What difference could it make for how the industrialised North relates to the South and vice versa if news production models and practices were changed: if African reporters provided the news about Africa to international news media?

- Is there an alternative basis of media and communication within and between Northern and Southern publics that challenges its own ethnocentricity?

- What is the capacity of African journalist professionals and media organisations and their prospects for the future?