Acknowledging the journalists of the global south
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12865616 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Beate Josephi (0000-0003-1954-5230, The University of Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 44 |
| Pages | e4404-e4404 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media & Jornalismo (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1645-5681 • E-ISSN: 2183-5462 |
| Publisher | Coimbra University Press (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.14195/2183-5462_44_4 |
| OpenAlex | W4400092133 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
A dozen years ago, we asked the question, how much democracy does journalism need?(Josephi, 2013).Background to that question was the realisation that the absolute link of journalism and democracy, as it appeared in much of the scholarly literature of the time, made journalism the privilege of a small part of the world, leaving aside the majority of countries.That majority, against hopeful expectations, has only grown.As charts show, the number of electoral democracies, electoral autocracies and closed autocracies risen have risen substantially, wiping out the advances of democracy made over the last 35 years.According to V-dem's Democracy Report (2023, p.6), 72% of the world's population lived in autocracies in 2022.Electoral democracies, electoral autocracies and closed autocracies make up three-quarters of the world's nations and carry ever more weight and influence on the global stage.The BRICS states, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, at their inception in 2009, kept a precarious equilibrium between free and restricted speech (Thussu & Nordenstreng, 2021).But when adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as new BRICS member states in 2024, the balance has decidedly shifted towards restrictions of freedom of speech.These developments have resulted in calls to step back from "using the democratic vector as basic frame for cross-country comparison" (Gladkova & Budronova, 2023, p.2) and from the mantra of seeing nations 'transitioning to democracy' that dominated scholarly literature about the global south, and still continues to appear.According to Ambrosio (2014, p.476), "a bias towards seeing authoritarianism through those factors or forces which precipitate a change to democracy" led to a blind eye to those forces which kept authoritarianism stable.That bias towards forces that might signal a move towards democracy applies especially to the work of journalists, where it is customary to locate seeds or manifestations of independent or critical thinking.Instead of asking, how much democracy does journalism need, should we have asked, how much democracy do journalists need?This short article is to give acknowledgement to the large proportion of journalists around the world whose work has been largely, and often deliberately, overlooked.While in the global north much attention has been paid to differentiating between media systems (Hallin & Mancini, 2004; 2012), few investigations have been done into the modes by which authoritarian states control their media, seemingly based on the assumption that all restrictions are the same.George's work (2020; 2007) is among the
Autocracy · China · Democracy · Development economics · Economics · Journalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Demography · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |