This article explores artificial intelligence (AI) uptake in selected South African mainstream newsrooms. It seeks to determine the extent to which AI has been adopted and how journalists and editors perceive its appropriation in newsmaking practices. To address these two broad aims, the study used in-depth interviews with journalists and editors. Our findings suggest a slow, varied but methodical uptake of AI practices in South Africa’s mainstream newsrooms. We deduced three uses of AI in these newsrooms. The first is what we call the holistic appropriation of AI. The second one is the exclusively technological appropriation of AI, and the last one is the task-specific appropriation of AI. This varied uptake of AI is taking place against a deep-seated skepticism with this technology.
Category: Allen Munoriyarwa, Ph.D.
Allen Munoriyarwa, Ph.D.
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Digital Surveillance in Southern Africa
Surveillance practices are increasingly becoming dynamic and pervasive, spurred on by the ever-mutating changes in technological inventions at a global level. The practice of surveillance has become embedded in our everyday digital communications, public spaces, workplaces, cross-border movements, financial transactions, logging transactions and many other spaces on which citizens interact. What makes the case of southern African region unique is not only the increasing pervasiveness of surveillance, but the acute lack of transparency in the practice, the absence of necessary and proportionate regulations and the politicized nature of surveillance in the region. This is worrisome in a region where constitutionalism is sluggish, democracy is decline and (semi) authoritarian tendencies are becoming more entrenched.
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Health chatbots in Africa: scoping review
Background
This scoping review explores and summarizes the existing literature on the use of chatbots to support and promote health in Africa.Objective
The primary aim was to learn where, and under what circumstances, chatbots have been used effectively for health in Africa; how chatbots have been developed to the best effect; and how they have been evaluated by looking at literature published between 2017 and 2022. A secondary aim was to identify potential lessons and best practices for others chatbots. The review also aimed to highlight directions for future research on the use of chatbots for health in Africa.Methods
Using the 2005 Arksey and O’Malley framework, we used a Boolean search to broadly search literature published between January 2017 and July 2022. Literature between June 2021 and July 2022 was identified using Google Scholar, EBSCO information services—which includes the African HealthLine, PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, Cochrane, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science databases—and other internet sources (including gray literature). The inclusion criteria were literature about health chatbots in Africa published in journals, conference papers, opinion, or white papers.Results
In all, 212 records were screened, and 12 articles met the inclusion criteria. Results were analyzed according to the themes they covered. The themes identified included the purpose of the chatbot as either providing an educational or information-sharing service or providing a counselling service. Accessibility as a result of either technical restrictions or language … -
Exploring data journalism practices in Africa: data politics, media ecosystems and newsroom infrastructures
Extant research on data journalism in Africa has focused on newsroom factors and the predilections of individual journalists as determinants of the uptake of data journalism on the continent. This article diverts from this literature by examining the slow uptake of data journalism in sub- Saharan Africa through the prisms of non-newsroom factors. Drawing on in-depth interviews with prominent investigative journalists sampled from several African countries, we argue that to understand the slow uptake of data journalism on the continent; there is a need to critique the role of data politics, which encompasses state, market and existing media ecosystems across the continent. Therefore, it is necessary to move beyond newsroom-centric factors that have dominated the contemporary understanding of data journalism practices.
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Google news initiative’s influence on technological media innovation in Africa and the Middle East
The Google News Initiative (GNI) aims to collaborate closely with the news industry and financially support the creation of quality journalism in the digital age. It also aims to bring technological advancements and innovation into newsrooms’ operations. Drawing on journalism innovation and responsible innovation theories, this study examines GNI beneficiaries in Africa and the Middle East. To address this, we analysed GNI projects’ descriptions combined with thirteen (n= 13) in-depth interviews with leading actors and beneficiary news organisations to answer two main questions:(a) What are the main characteristics of the technological innovations proposed by GNI Innovation Challenge grantees in Africa and the Middle East? and (b) How are these news media organisations becoming increasingly dependent on these platforms’ technological and financial aspects? Anchored in journalism innovation, responsible innovation, and platformisation theories, our findings show that funded organisations heavily depend on Google’s technological and financial infrastructure to innovate. Furthermore, we note that some projects do not offer a clear path for sustainability in the future. We further argue that this initiative builds an infrastructure of power and dependency that poses risks to responsible innovation in journalism. Our study contributes to extant scholarship on digital platforms and their role in the infrastructure of news organisations, creating power asymmetries between those who serve as the backbone for data flows and technological processes and those dependent on these institutions.
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Diving into data: Pitfalls and promises of data journalism in semi-authoritarian contexts
This paper calls for greater scrutiny of data journalism as a practice in the semi authoritarian context of Zimbabwe. Based on in-depth interviews with practising journalists in Zimbabwe, this paper answers two main questions: In what ways is data journalism practised in the Zimbabwean context? To what extent are newsrooms in Zimbabwe “tooled” and capacitated for data journalism practices? We note that data journalism is widely understood by individual journalists in this country but paradoxically less practised due to many challenges. By answering these two questions, we sustain an argument that data journalism appropriation in semi-authoritarian contexts can be instrumental in promoting monitorial democracy and reversing media decadence.
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The militarization of digital surveillance in post-coup Zimbabwe:‘Just don’t tell them what we do’
While a large body of research has documented and theorized digital surveillance practices in various political contexts, little has been done to investigate the growing trend of military-driven digital surveillance practices in semi-authoritarian regimes. In this article, I use the case of the surveillance practices of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces to argue that scholarship needs to (re)evaluate this emerging trend. The article has three aims: first, it explores military-driven surveillance capabilities, the circulation of such capabilities and the surveillance tactics emerging in the semi-authoritarian context of Zimbabwe. Second, it examines the interface of factionalism and politics within the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and how this influences quotidian military-driven digital surveillance practices.
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Powers, Interests and Actors 1: The Influence of China in Africa’s Digital Surveillance Practices
This chapter examines the influence of China in the growth of Africa’s digital surveillance 1 capabilities and practices. The growth of Chinese investments through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the global south is well documented. Yet, China’s digital infrastructure investments in Africa still present a research lacuna that needs to be filled. Equally under-researched is how it influences African governments’ clampdown on citizens. Utilising the international political economy approach, we analyse the intersection of power, actors and interests in Africa’s surveillance practices focusing on Zambia and Zimbabwe. We focus on Zimbabwe and Zambia because their ties with China are among the most enduring of all African countries.
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Hate speech and polarization in participatory society, 67-82
Since the advent of Twitter in 2006, South Africa has witnessed a spectacular explosion of racist discourse on social media platforms. According to the South Africa Human Rights Commission (SAHRC, 2016), the centres of explosive racist discourses are Twitter and Facebook. SAHRC (2016) further notes that recent racist outbursts on Twitter and Facebook threaten the creation of a non-racial society and general social cohesion in South Africa. The surge of racist rants in South Africa reflects a society that is increasingly becoming racially polarised (South African Institute of Race Relations, 2018). The SAHRC trend analysis report (2016) reveals that discrimination on the grounds of race remains the highest of equality complaints, with an annual increase in high-profile derogatory incidences frequently aimed at black Africans. Similarly, Daniels (2009), Rauch and Schantz (2013) and Shepherd et al.(2015) note that social media have become a major conveyer of hate crimes against racial minorities and a major reason for the failure of multiculturalism as an institutional practice at a global level. Social media discussions on the subject of race in South Africa have served to highlight how racism remains pervasive and toxic (SAHRC, 2016). Some studies, such as those by Mafoko (2017) and Stephens (2018), have argued that the ‘rainbow nation’that the first democratically elected president of the country, Nelson Mandela, envisaged is now history–not a lived reality.
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In the Dead End: The Decline of the Indigenous Language Press in Post-colonial Zimbabwe
The Zimbabwe Media commission (ZMC), the statutory body that regulates the press in Zimbabwe, has on several occasions urged media proprietors to prioritise newspapers, or even magazines, in Zimbabwe’s varied indigenous languages. At independence in 1980, the government of Zimbabwe, through its newly created media entity, New Ziana, made strenuous efforts to promote the indigenous language press. Yet, only a handful of these newspapers remain. The few that do are tottering under severe challenges, and they do not show signs of sustainability going forward. Though the government claimed it would intervene to serve the indigenous language press, they have not helped save them. The continued decline of the press – as evidenced by closures, downsizing, staff turnover and many other symptoms – is testimony to the fact that these efforts have been hugely unsuccessful.
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Data journalism in the age of big data: An exploration into the uptake of data journalism in leading south African Newspapers
The growing capacity to generate large quantities of data as a result of rapid technological change in the recent past has meant that increasingly, journalists everywhere are under pressure to find new ways of handling this information deluge, processing and packaging it in ways that allow ease of access for their readers. These data blizzards have been further intensified by the ever-expanding social media networks that keep churning out large volumes of information at unprecedented speed, making gathering, processing and packaging information in visualisable form all the more important. The rise of data journalism is in part a direct response to this, as it provides journalists the critical tools to manipulate data on complex issues such as national budgets, election manifestos and national census for innovative storytelling. This chapter explores the emergence of data journalism in South Africa and analyses its …