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Toward an African Media Typology: Preliminary Reflections

Levi Obonyo

Howard Journal of Communication, volume 35, issue 3 (2023), pp. 326–340

"Africans’ voices and contributions to communication scholarship are of interest to many Africanists. Some discourses have explored reasons for this interest. This article continues this conversation. It recognizes the challenges contributing to the limited influence of the African voice in global ... more

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A Decolonial Approach to Open-Access Repositories: How to Set Up a Subject Repository for Documents on International Cultural Relations

Nora Schmidt

Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) (2023), 78 pp.

"This study is based on desk research, supplemented by a three-month open commenting period and a public workshop whose participants have substantial experience in the technologies and practices analysed, or are members of the communities of practice, amongst them experts who work in “Global South ... more

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‘Top-Tier’ Journals: Does a Global Reputation Mean a Global Orientation?

Cherian George, Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis

Global Media Studies Network, March 20 (2023)

"Academia as an industry has come to rely on journal impact factors as convenient proxy measures of faculty members’ research quality. As competition intensifies — among individuals, departments, and universities — such bibliometrics have grown in importance. At many institutions, researchers ... are pushed to publish in journals that are highly ranked. Many scholars of non-western societies have long noted, though, that “top-tier” journals, while international in reputation, are far from global in orientation. This is an issue that we and our colleagues in the Global Media Studies Network are keen to discuss. First, though, what exactly is the current state of affairs? We looked at 20 SSCI-indexed communication journals with high five-year journal impact factors. We categorised all the articles they published in 2021 and 2022 according to their geographic focus: what country or countries was each article studying? Here is what we found: [see chart]. This snapshot shows clearly that top-tier journals generally have a geographic diversity problem. Most of the articles are about the west, with a high proportion of articles focusing purely on the United States. Also striking is the lack of North-South comparative work, despite years of advocacy for comparative research. The chart may underestimate the imbalance. We coded many of the articles— literature reviews, meta-studies, or purely methodological or theoretical pieces— as geographically “non-specific” as they have no explicit focus on any particular country, but since these tend to be built on past work that was even less diverse than the field is now, most of these should probably be considered genetically western. One interesting pattern is that journals devoted to digital communication host a higher proportion of non-western work. This could be because the digital is so globalised and new that research on phenomena beyond the west (say, disinformation in Kenya’s social media) is intelligible to western editors, while research on older offline phenomena (say, caste discrimination on Indian television) requires extensive contextual explanation that journals do not have the patience for. The digital may also be more amenable than offline communication to the quantitative research methods favoured by many top journals." more

Otredades: Comunicología de los sures

Adalid Contreras Baspineiro

Ediciones CIESPAL (2023), 236 pp.

Bridging Two Worlds: Comparing Classical Political Thought and Statecraft in India and China

Amitav Acharya, Daniel A. Bell, Rajeev Bhargava, Yan (eds.) Xuetong

Oakland, Cal.: University of California Press (2023), xi, 318 pp.

Disruptions as Opportunities: Governing Chinese Society with Interactive Authoritarianism

Taiyi Sun

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2023), xv, 283 pp.

"[This book] addresses the long-standing puzzle of why China outlived other one-party authoritarian regimes with particular attention to how the state manages an emerging civil society. Drawing upon over 1,200 survey responses conducted in 126 villages in the Sichuan province, as well as 70 intervie ... more

Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development: Starting from the South

Margit van Wessel, Tiina Kontinen, Justice Nyigmah Bawole (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2023), xv, 348 pp.

"At a time when uneven power dynamics are high on development actors' agenda, this book will be an important contribution to researchers and practitioners working on innovation in development and civil society. While there is much discussion of localization, decolonization and 'shifting power' in ci ... more

Um giro do Sul para o Norte: A pesquisa brasileira de rádio e a (de)colonialidade do saber

Maira Rossin Gioia de Brutto, Valquiria Michaela John

Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias de la Comunicación, volume 22, issue 44 (2023), pp. 255-267

"Este artigo sistematiza uma cartografia de campo (Martín-Barbero, 2002) da pesquisa radiofônica a partir de um levantamento exploratório nos anais do Grupo de Trabalho de Rádio e Meios Sonoros dos Congressos da Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências da Comunicação entre 2013 e 2019. A discussão s ... more

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Fotogeschichten und Geschichtsbilder: Aneignung und Umdeutung historischer Fotografien in Tansania

Eliane Kurmann

Frankfurt am Main; New York: Campus Verlag (2023), 393 pp.

"In Tansania etablierten sich seit der Unabhängigkeit des Landes neue und eigenständige Praktiken in der Verwendung kolonialer Hinterlassenschaften. Ausgehend von den aktuellen Gebrauchsweisen dreier Fotografien aus dem späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert zeigt Eliane Kurmann, wie Tansanierinn ... more

Disputed archival heritage

James Lowry (ed.)

London; New York: Routledge (2023), xiv, 342 pp.

"Disputed Archival Heritage brings important new perspectives into the discourse on displaced archives. In contrast to shared or joint heritage framings, the book considers the implications of force, violence and loss in the displacement of archival heritage. With chapters from established and emerg ... more

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Different Global Journalisms: Cultures and Contexts

Saba Bebawi, Oxana Onilov (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2023), xvi, 205 pp.

"This edited collection seeks to better understand how journalism across cultures differs, presenting an in-depth exploration of global practices that departs from the typical Western-centric approach. Journalists across the world are trained, generally speaking, within Western models of reporting a ... more

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Media and Communication Theory in Africa

Nelson Okorie, Babatunde Raphael Ojebuyi, Ngozi Okpara (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2023), xxii, 340 pp.

"This contributed volume explores theories of media and communication and focuses on providing African perspectives on global conversations. Using broad cases relating to media and communication theories, this book explores socio-cultural issues affecting most modern African societies, providing a c ... more

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From Research to Action: The Practice of Decolonizing ICT4D

Caroline Khene, Silvia Masiero

Information Technology for Development, volume 28, issue 3 (2022), pp. 443-450

"The production of knowledge in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) research has been characterized by an ongoing shift from dominantly Western-based to Indigenous theory formulations. This editorial puts forward core concepts in the decolonization of ICT4D, arguing that ... more

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The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory

Yoshitaka Miike, Jing Yin (eds.)

New York; London: Routledge (2022), xxviii, 515 pp.

"Moving beyond the U.S.-Eurocentric paradigm of communication theory, this handbook broadens the intellectual horizons of the discipline by highlighting underrepresented, especially non-Western, theorists and theories, and identifies key issues and challenges for future scholarship. Showcasing diver ... more

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Mahatma Gandhi and Mass Media: Mediating Conflict and Social Change

Teresa Joseph

London; New York: Routledge (2022), xiv, 180 pp.

"This book explores Gandhi's engagement with print news media. It examines how Gandhi, the man and his message, negotiated with the sociopolitical circumstances of his milieu and the methods of communication that he adopted towards this end. It analyses the role that he played in building up alterna ... more

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Borderland: Decolonizing the Words of War

Chrisanthi Giotis

Oxford University Press (2022), x, 278 pp.

"In an era marked by an unprecedented refugee crisis and ongoing, seemingly unending, borderland conflicts, foreign correspondents could play a pivotal role in helping create a global public sphere that incorporates the perspectives of those who are most effected by ongoing resource-fueled wars—an ... more

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