There has been considerable research looking at the potential of new media technologies, traditional journalism and citizen reporting. The extent to which these new media technologies and ‘citizen journalism’ have morphed or reconfigured traditional journalism practice remains debatable. Recently, there has been questions around the limits of social media in journalism practice as the ethical lines continue to become blurred. It is this conundrum of the role of social media in the reconfiguration of the political economy of the media and news production practices that requires more investigation. On one hand, social media allows citizen journalists or amateur journalists to articulate themselves in their own language challenging the hegemony the mainstream media enjoyed for a long time. However, the flip side is that most content posted on social media does not go through ethical checks which has consequences for mainstream media that rely on social media for content. Social media has also turned the logic of the political-economy of the media production on its head as citizens can now produce, package and distribute news and information with shoestring budgets and in authoritarian regimes with no license of practice. This new political-economy means the power that special interest groups used to enjoy is increasingly slipping from their hands as citizens take back the power to appropriate social media journalism to counter hegemonic narratives. Citizens can also perform journalistic roles of investigating and whistle-blowing but with lack or limited regulation, this becomes a murky area of traditional journalism practice. In this proposed edited collection, we call for chapters with interest in case studies of news media employing and integrating social media into their news production practices. The volume attempts to link social media use to journalistic practices and news production processes in the digital age of the Global South. Critically, the submissions should look at seminal cases of start-up news media whose content is informed by social media content and trends. Issues of blurred ethics in the era of social media journalism is of importance as unlicensed and to an extent untrained journalist publish information with no regard to the code of ethics. Contributions are not limited to the suggested areas below:
· Use of social media content in traditional journalism sectors
· The meaning of interferences of technology and audiences to professional journalism
· Ethics in the use of social media content
· Survival strategies and alternative media in the global south
· Political economy of social media
· Digital journalism start-ups
· Meanings of citizens’ contributions to mainstream journalism
· Meanings of citizens’ debating of mainstream journalism production processes/products
· Meanings of citizens’ critiques of mainstream journalism
· Power dynamics in social media driven mainstream journalism
· Counterhegemonic and hegemonic enterprises in news production, consumption in social media driven journalism.
Please email chapter proposals of up to 500 words in length, as well as brief author biographical information, to the volume editors at shepherd.mpofu@ul.ac.za and MatsileleT@cput.ac.za.
These should be sent through by the 15th of July 2020. Decisions on proposals will be made and communicated to authors early August, 2020. The series editors of Palgrave Studies in Journalism and Global South have indicated interest to publish this volume.