"In 2014 Malawi experienced its first-ever tripartite elections involving presidential, parliamentary and local government contests. The role of the media was monitored in a major operation covering radio, television, newspapers, news websites and social media. The results revealed that, with the ex ... ception of state-controlled media, news outlets played a broadly positive role, providing fair coverage for the four leading candidates and reporting on a broad range of topics. Social media provided a lively platform for the views and opinions of mainly partisan participants (presumably mostly from the urban elite). On the negative side, coverage of the presidential and to a lesser extent the parliamentary contests dominated, so that the amount of news about local government issues was minimal. The most important negative aspect of the campaign was the one-sided coverage provided by the two state radio channels, the state television station and its online news service." (Abstract) more

"Despite the generalizations and stereotypes that are often used to describe Africa in popular (and journalistic) discourses, the continent's diversity escapes easy categorization or glib narratives of either the 'Hopeless Continent' or 'Africa Rising' variety - the two poles between which the Econo ... mist's coverage has veered in recent years. Africa is a continent after all, not a country (as the blog www.africasacountry.com so splendidly keeps reminding us in its coverage of the variety of African media and culture). This variety applies to journalism on the continent as well. Africa's journalism is delivered across a wide range of platforms, from legacy media such as newspapers (which do not quite share the same rapid decline as their counterparts in the mediasaturated North) and radio (still the pervasive medium on the continent), to the citizen journalism found in the rapidly growing number of online and mobile platforms. This issue of Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies includes research pertaining to the variety of platforms and practices of journalism in Africa, and how the media continue to evolve, merge and mutate." (Introduction) more