Meghan Sobel Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4428419 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Meghan Sobel Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Meghan Sobel |
| FAMILY NAME | Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | COHEN M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Regis University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4199-3072 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Constructive or Constrained? Solutions Journalism in an Authoritarian State
Some have expressed concern that the Western concepts of constructive and solutions journalism could be used to silence critical journalists in countries with restrictions on media freedom. Using qualitative interviews, this study asked journalists in Rwanda if they believe solutions journalism is appropriate in their authoritarian media context. Findings indicate that although journalists like the idea of solutions journalism, they believe solut…
Communication Research Inequalities and the Prestige Dilemma: Negotiating International Recognition and Local Representation in Global South Journals
This article examines the editorial policies and structural characteristics of Global South-based communication, media, and journalism academic journals, analyzing how they balance the tension between seeking international recognition and addressing the needs of local audiences. Using two datasets—one detailing journal attributes and another mapping editorial board members—we investigated the websites of 71 SCImago Journal & Country Rank-indexed …
Citizen journalism revisited: A case study of Kenya’s Kibera news network
In an evolving media landscape, the prominence and influence of citizen journalism has grown markedly, challenging historical norms and providing alternative narratives. While traditional journalism has been guided by objectivity, autonomy, and ethics, its representation has been questioned, especially in marginalised communities like Kibera, a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya. Scholars have shed light on the transformational role of journalism an…
A geo-cultural approach to African media literacy: Introducing the geo-cultural media literacy spectrum
This paper argues that the coloniality of global knowledge has centralized the Global North to the media literacy debate, leaving some non-western countries to abandon their own experience while mimicking western theory and practice. This paper highlights three major historical events that exemplify the westernization of media literacy and calls for geo-culturalism in its conceptualization to accommodate locations like East Africa whose digital m…
“You Cannot Sway Them with Logic”: Journalists’ Responses to Public Support for Censorship in Kenya
A growing body of research has examined press freedom around the world. However, little research has examined journalists’ responses when citizens support press censorship. As such, this study examines press freedom through a different lens—journalists’ perceptions about public support for censorship. Kenya boasts a relatively robust press freedom environment compared to neighbouring countries. However, it still faces challenges, including a lack…
Journalists’ Perceptions About Public Trust in East African Media: Comparative, Cross-Country Surveys from Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda
Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the ways in which the public trusts an array of media content, outlets, and platforms. However, the bulk of this work has focused on audience research in Western democracies. This study uses surveys of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya in 2019 to examine the metajournalistic discourse surrounding how press freedom levels, technological advancements, and various sociopolitical factors imp…
Unpacking the African media typology: Perspectives from journalists in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda
The uniqueness of journalism cultures across African nations often highlights the inapplicability of normative, Western-centric theories. The newly proposed African media typology suggests that media systems in Africa would be best understood by thinking about them within the context of the type of individual in a leadership position in that country at a specific moment in time. This study aims to begin operationalizing the African media typology…
Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy: Lessons from Journalists in East Africa
Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy uses the perceptions of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya to examine mediascapes at varying stages of development and democracy-building—Rwanda, which experienced a genocide in 1994, is in relatively early (though fast-paced) stages of reconstruction; Uganda, which experienced a civil war in the 1980s and unrest in the 1990s, though arguably not to the extent of Rwanda’s genocide, can b…
Misinformation Literacy of Covid-19 Digital News in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda
Amid a rise of misinformation worldwide, this paper examines digital misinformation literacy as it relates to COVID-19 news in East Africa. The study is grounded in inoculation theory and contributes to the body of scholarship examining misinformation literacy beyond the Western world. Data came from a comparative, cross-national survey in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda (N = 3,203), making this the largest known empirical investigation into digital mis…
Demographic Differences in Digital News Literacy in East Africa
Nations across Africa have seen substantial growth in technological advancements, including Internet and cell phone access. This growth has been unevenly experienced and has come with some unintended consequences, including the spread of mis- and disinformation. Previous research suggests that misinformation and disinformation are growing problems in the pockets across the region where research has been conducted, but individuals’ circumstances, …
Journalistic role orientations in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya
This study examines how journalists in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya perceive their journalistic role orientations in light of the countries’ differing political systems, Rwanda representing the nation with the most restrictive political system, Uganda sitting in the middle and Kenya illustrating the nation that is home to the least restrictive political system. Data were analyzed from a comparative, quantitative online survey completed by 424 journal…
Media and money: A 50-year analysis of international news coverage and U.S. foreign aid
This study compared 50 years of the New York Times’ international news (N = 20,765) with U.S. foreign aid allocations and country rankings in Freedom House's Freedom in the World report to understand how the amount of foreign aid relates to the amount and content of coverage of nations as well as whether/how political similarity impacts coverage and aid. Nations receiving the highest level of aid received the most news coverage and topics of cove…
Public Trust in State-Run News Media in Rwanda
This study examined public trust in the media through focus groups with young, educated urbanites in Rwanda. Despite the fact media in Rwanda incited violence during the 1994 genocide, results revealed that the Rwandan public highly trust their local news, especially state-run media. The findings suggest frameworks for studying media trust should consider the public’s trust in government, as the two might be linked, and also suggest scholars thin…
Tweeter-in-chief: Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s use of Twitter
Rwanda has received international praise for its rapid development and is said to be undergoing a ‘technology revolution’ at the hands of President Paul Kagame who has been described as a ‘Digital President’. This quantitative content analysis of Kagame’s official Twitter account analysed the first ten years of his tweets and found that he primarily tweets in English, with a positive sentiment about cross-government and cross-border interactions …
Salary, Suppression, and Spies: Journalistic Challenges in Uganda
Despite enduring “some of the worst political and economic chaos anywhere in the world” (Mwesige, P. G. 2004. “Disseminators, Advocates and Watchdogs: A Profile of Ugandan Journalists in the New Millennium.” Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 5 (1): 69–96. doi:10.1177/1464884904039556), for the last quarter century Uganda has seen significant progress under President Yoweri Museveni, who is credited with liberalizing the media and instituti…
Press freedom in 10 African nations: Citizen attitudes and global rankings
Press freedom is said to be a necessary pillar of democracy. As many sub-Saharan African nations move towards creating or strengthening democracies, examining their levels of press freedom may be an important element. This study utilizes public opinion data from 10 nations in the sub-Saharan African region and international press freedom rankings from Reporters Without Borders to better understand both how important (or not) citizens view press f…
Local-Language Radio Stations in Kenya: Helpful or Harmful
Today, Kenya has a vibrant media landscape, one of the most sophisticated in the region. In particular, vernacular radio—radio stations that broadcast news and entertainment in indigenous languages—is thriving. Vernacular stations have grown in popularity and there are now more than 30 airing across the country. However, critics have suggested that vernacular stations played a role in the 2007 post-election violence that killed more than 1000 peo…
Sex Trafficking as a News Story: Evolving Structure and Reporting Strategies
This quantitative content analysis uses sex trafficking as a case study to understand how news reporting techniques evolve as a social problem emerges on the public agenda. Results indicate that as news organizations became more experienced in covering trafficking and the public made more aware of trafficking as a social issue, journalists moved from routines that favored official perspectives and frames that concentrated on individuals, to the s…
Journalists’ Perceptions of Human Rights Reporting in Rwanda
News media play a role in increasing public understanding of human rights issues. Yet, little scholarship has analysed human rights reporting in developing or post-conflict nations. Interviews with Rwandan journalists revealed that, in this post-genocide era of reconstruction, reporters define human rights broadly and believe reporting on abuses has a positive impact on the abuse. However, a lack of press freedom inhibits human rights reporting, …
Reconstructing Rwanda: How Rwandan reporters use constructive journalism to promote peace
In 1994 Rwanda, some journalists used their power for evil when government-run media houses perpetrated genocide through what scholars termed “hate media.” Since then, however, Rwanda’s media landscape has changed dramatically and the country has seen tremendous social and economic progress. Building on the tenets of social responsibility and framing theories and on literature regarding journalistic role functions, this study utilized qualitative…
Female genital cutting in the news media: A content analysis
Mass media play an important role in explaining the issue of female genital cutting and can influence discourse among the general public as well as policy makers. Understanding how news media present female genital cutting has strong implications for the global status of women. This study, a quantitative content analysis, analyzed how 15 years of newspaper coverage surrounding the launch of the Millennium Development Goals framed female genital c…
Framing an Emerging Issue: How U.S. Print and Broadcast News Media Covered Sex Trafficking, 2008–2012
Sex trafficking has increasingly become a topic on the public and political agenda. This study revealed that coverage of sex trafficking in U.S. print and broadcast media from 2008–2012 was largely episodic, focused on crime and policy frames, privileged official sources, and neglected survivors’ voices. However, findings suggest a shift toward thematic framing as the issue became more widely understood by the public and policymakers
Motivating news audiences: Shock them or provide them with solutions
Despite the well-established power of the media to shape public perceptions of social problems, compassion fatigue is believed to remain prevalent. So what does it take for someone to be compelled to act after reading a story or seeing an image of a prominent issue? This study, a 3-by-2 between subjects experiment, examined the effects of two journalistic techniques — shocking audiences into action with offensive stories or inspiring them to act …
Reconstructing Rwanda: How Rwandan reporters use constructive journalism to promote peace
In 1994 Rwanda, some journalists used their power for evil when government-run media houses perpetrated genocide through what scholars termed “hate media.” Since then, however, Rwanda’s media landscape has changed dramatically and the country has seen tremendous social and economic progress. Building on the tenets of social responsibility and framing theories and on literature regarding journalistic role functions, this study utilized qualitative…
Framing an Emerging Issue: How U.S. Print and Broadcast News Media Covered Sex Trafficking, 2008–2012
Sex trafficking has increasingly become a topic on the public and political agenda. This study revealed that coverage of sex trafficking in U.S. print and broadcast media from 2008–2012 was largely episodic, focused on crime and policy frames, privileged official sources, and neglected survivors’ voices. However, findings suggest a shift toward thematic framing as the issue became more widely understood by the public and policymakers
Sex Trafficking as a News Story: Evolving Structure and Reporting Strategies
This quantitative content analysis uses sex trafficking as a case study to understand how news reporting techniques evolve as a social problem emerges on the public agenda. Results indicate that as news organizations became more experienced in covering trafficking and the public made more aware of trafficking as a social issue, journalists moved from routines that favored official perspectives and frames that concentrated on individuals, to the s…
Journalistic role orientations in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya
This study examines how journalists in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya perceive their journalistic role orientations in light of the countries’ differing political systems, Rwanda representing the nation with the most restrictive political system, Uganda sitting in the middle and Kenya illustrating the nation that is home to the least restrictive political system. Data were analyzed from a comparative, quantitative online survey completed by 424 journal…
Salary, Suppression, and Spies: Journalistic Challenges in Uganda
Despite enduring “some of the worst political and economic chaos anywhere in the world” (Mwesige, P. G. 2004. “Disseminators, Advocates and Watchdogs: A Profile of Ugandan Journalists in the New Millennium.” Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 5 (1): 69–96. doi:10.1177/1464884904039556), for the last quarter century Uganda has seen significant progress under President Yoweri Museveni, who is credited with liberalizing the media and instituti…
Local-Language Radio Stations in Kenya: Helpful or Harmful
Today, Kenya has a vibrant media landscape, one of the most sophisticated in the region. In particular, vernacular radio—radio stations that broadcast news and entertainment in indigenous languages—is thriving. Vernacular stations have grown in popularity and there are now more than 30 airing across the country. However, critics have suggested that vernacular stations played a role in the 2007 post-election violence that killed more than 1000 peo…
Female genital cutting in the news media: A content analysis
Mass media play an important role in explaining the issue of female genital cutting and can influence discourse among the general public as well as policy makers. Understanding how news media present female genital cutting has strong implications for the global status of women. This study, a quantitative content analysis, analyzed how 15 years of newspaper coverage surrounding the launch of the Millennium Development Goals framed female genital c…
Motivating news audiences: Shock them or provide them with solutions
Despite the well-established power of the media to shape public perceptions of social problems, compassion fatigue is believed to remain prevalent. So what does it take for someone to be compelled to act after reading a story or seeing an image of a prominent issue? This study, a 3-by-2 between subjects experiment, examined the effects of two journalistic techniques — shocking audiences into action with offensive stories or inspiring them to act …
Female genital cutting in the news media: A content analysis
Mass media play an important role in explaining the issue of female genital cutting and can influence discourse among the general public as well as policy makers. Understanding how news media present female genital cutting has strong implications for the global status of women. This study, a quantitative content analysis, analyzed how 15 years of newspaper coverage surrounding the launch of the Millennium Development Goals framed female genital c…
Framing an Emerging Issue: How U.S. Print and Broadcast News Media Covered Sex Trafficking, 2008–2012
Sex trafficking has increasingly become a topic on the public and political agenda. This study revealed that coverage of sex trafficking in U.S. print and broadcast media from 2008–2012 was largely episodic, focused on crime and policy frames, privileged official sources, and neglected survivors’ voices. However, findings suggest a shift toward thematic framing as the issue became more widely understood by the public and policymakers
Reconstructing Rwanda: How Rwandan reporters use constructive journalism to promote peace
In 1994 Rwanda, some journalists used their power for evil when government-run media houses perpetrated genocide through what scholars termed “hate media.” Since then, however, Rwanda’s media landscape has changed dramatically and the country has seen tremendous social and economic progress. Building on the tenets of social responsibility and framing theories and on literature regarding journalistic role functions, this study utilized qualitative…
Journalists’ Perceptions of Human Rights Reporting in Rwanda
News media play a role in increasing public understanding of human rights issues. Yet, little scholarship has analysed human rights reporting in developing or post-conflict nations. Interviews with Rwandan journalists revealed that, in this post-genocide era of reconstruction, reporters define human rights broadly and believe reporting on abuses has a positive impact on the abuse. However, a lack of press freedom inhibits human rights reporting, …
Local-Language Radio Stations in Kenya: Helpful or Harmful
Today, Kenya has a vibrant media landscape, one of the most sophisticated in the region. In particular, vernacular radio—radio stations that broadcast news and entertainment in indigenous languages—is thriving. Vernacular stations have grown in popularity and there are now more than 30 airing across the country. However, critics have suggested that vernacular stations played a role in the 2007 post-election violence that killed more than 1000 peo…
Sex Trafficking as a News Story: Evolving Structure and Reporting Strategies
This quantitative content analysis uses sex trafficking as a case study to understand how news reporting techniques evolve as a social problem emerges on the public agenda. Results indicate that as news organizations became more experienced in covering trafficking and the public made more aware of trafficking as a social issue, journalists moved from routines that favored official perspectives and frames that concentrated on individuals, to the s…
Press freedom in 10 African nations: Citizen attitudes and global rankings
Press freedom is said to be a necessary pillar of democracy. As many sub-Saharan African nations move towards creating or strengthening democracies, examining their levels of press freedom may be an important element. This study utilizes public opinion data from 10 nations in the sub-Saharan African region and international press freedom rankings from Reporters Without Borders to better understand both how important (or not) citizens view press f…
Media and money: A 50-year analysis of international news coverage and U.S. foreign aid
This study compared 50 years of the New York Times’ international news (N = 20,765) with U.S. foreign aid allocations and country rankings in Freedom House's Freedom in the World report to understand how the amount of foreign aid relates to the amount and content of coverage of nations as well as whether/how political similarity impacts coverage and aid. Nations receiving the highest level of aid received the most news coverage and topics of cove…
Public Trust in State-Run News Media in Rwanda
This study examined public trust in the media through focus groups with young, educated urbanites in Rwanda. Despite the fact media in Rwanda incited violence during the 1994 genocide, results revealed that the Rwandan public highly trust their local news, especially state-run media. The findings suggest frameworks for studying media trust should consider the public’s trust in government, as the two might be linked, and also suggest scholars thin…
Tweeter-in-chief: Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s use of Twitter
Rwanda has received international praise for its rapid development and is said to be undergoing a ‘technology revolution’ at the hands of President Paul Kagame who has been described as a ‘Digital President’. This quantitative content analysis of Kagame’s official Twitter account analysed the first ten years of his tweets and found that he primarily tweets in English, with a positive sentiment about cross-government and cross-border interactions …
Salary, Suppression, and Spies: Journalistic Challenges in Uganda
Despite enduring “some of the worst political and economic chaos anywhere in the world” (Mwesige, P. G. 2004. “Disseminators, Advocates and Watchdogs: A Profile of Ugandan Journalists in the New Millennium.” Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 5 (1): 69–96. doi:10.1177/1464884904039556), for the last quarter century Uganda has seen significant progress under President Yoweri Museveni, who is credited with liberalizing the media and instituti…
Demographic Differences in Digital News Literacy in East Africa
Nations across Africa have seen substantial growth in technological advancements, including Internet and cell phone access. This growth has been unevenly experienced and has come with some unintended consequences, including the spread of mis- and disinformation. Previous research suggests that misinformation and disinformation are growing problems in the pockets across the region where research has been conducted, but individuals’ circumstances, …
Journalistic role orientations in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya
This study examines how journalists in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya perceive their journalistic role orientations in light of the countries’ differing political systems, Rwanda representing the nation with the most restrictive political system, Uganda sitting in the middle and Kenya illustrating the nation that is home to the least restrictive political system. Data were analyzed from a comparative, quantitative online survey completed by 424 journal…
Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy: Lessons from Journalists in East Africa
Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy uses the perceptions of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya to examine mediascapes at varying stages of development and democracy-building—Rwanda, which experienced a genocide in 1994, is in relatively early (though fast-paced) stages of reconstruction; Uganda, which experienced a civil war in the 1980s and unrest in the 1990s, though arguably not to the extent of Rwanda’s genocide, can b…
Misinformation Literacy of Covid-19 Digital News in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda
Amid a rise of misinformation worldwide, this paper examines digital misinformation literacy as it relates to COVID-19 news in East Africa. The study is grounded in inoculation theory and contributes to the body of scholarship examining misinformation literacy beyond the Western world. Data came from a comparative, cross-national survey in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda (N = 3,203), making this the largest known empirical investigation into digital mis…
Citizen journalism revisited: A case study of Kenya’s Kibera news network
In an evolving media landscape, the prominence and influence of citizen journalism has grown markedly, challenging historical norms and providing alternative narratives. While traditional journalism has been guided by objectivity, autonomy, and ethics, its representation has been questioned, especially in marginalised communities like Kibera, a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya. Scholars have shed light on the transformational role of journalism an…
A geo-cultural approach to African media literacy: Introducing the geo-cultural media literacy spectrum
This paper argues that the coloniality of global knowledge has centralized the Global North to the media literacy debate, leaving some non-western countries to abandon their own experience while mimicking western theory and practice. This paper highlights three major historical events that exemplify the westernization of media literacy and calls for geo-culturalism in its conceptualization to accommodate locations like East Africa whose digital m…
“You Cannot Sway Them with Logic”: Journalists’ Responses to Public Support for Censorship in Kenya
A growing body of research has examined press freedom around the world. However, little research has examined journalists’ responses when citizens support press censorship. As such, this study examines press freedom through a different lens—journalists’ perceptions about public support for censorship. Kenya boasts a relatively robust press freedom environment compared to neighbouring countries. However, it still faces challenges, including a lack…
Journalists’ Perceptions About Public Trust in East African Media: Comparative, Cross-Country Surveys from Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda
Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the ways in which the public trusts an array of media content, outlets, and platforms. However, the bulk of this work has focused on audience research in Western democracies. This study uses surveys of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya in 2019 to examine the metajournalistic discourse surrounding how press freedom levels, technological advancements, and various sociopolitical factors imp…
Unpacking the African media typology: Perspectives from journalists in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda
The uniqueness of journalism cultures across African nations often highlights the inapplicability of normative, Western-centric theories. The newly proposed African media typology suggests that media systems in Africa would be best understood by thinking about them within the context of the type of individual in a leadership position in that country at a specific moment in time. This study aims to begin operationalizing the African media typology…
Constructive or Constrained? Solutions Journalism in an Authoritarian State
Some have expressed concern that the Western concepts of constructive and solutions journalism could be used to silence critical journalists in countries with restrictions on media freedom. Using qualitative interviews, this study asked journalists in Rwanda if they believe solutions journalism is appropriate in their authoritarian media context. Findings indicate that although journalists like the idea of solutions journalism, they believe solut…
Communication Research Inequalities and the Prestige Dilemma: Negotiating International Recognition and Local Representation in Global South Journals
This article examines the editorial policies and structural characteristics of Global South-based communication, media, and journalism academic journals, analyzing how they balance the tension between seeking international recognition and addressing the needs of local audiences. Using two datasets—one detailing journal attributes and another mapping editorial board members—we investigated the websites of 71 SCImago Journal & Country Rank-indexed …
Political science (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Media Studies and Communication (15 works) · Media studies (13 works) · Media Influence and Politics (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Journalism (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Democracy (6 works)