International news reporting in the multidimensional network: The socio-demographics, professional culture and newswork of foreign correspondents working across Sub-Saharan Africa

摘要

A sizable portion of our everyday knowledge about Sub-Saharan Africa comes from the work of international news reporters stationed in the continent. Even though these news actors play a critical role in the communication of the distant Other, frequently criticized for its representational deficits, scholar empirical research on the work of foreign correspondents has been considerably neglected: it is now decades old, it lacks a systematic examination of the on the ground realities of journalism in Africa and of the evolving work of professionals, Pro-Ams and citizen media organizations supported by networked digital media.;This thesis is about the socio-demographics, the professional cultures and the newswork of these individuals. It inspects long-term trajectories in international journalism combined with short-term developments based on transformations on microelectronics and digitization. Three main lines of inquiry are outlined: who is actually reporting across the continent, what are the main characteristics of the occupational cultures in place and the impending constraints over newsworkers' production routines.;We assess how professional international news reporters are repositioning themselves in a transforming communicative environment, and how they interpret their own occupation and the role of rising actors in the transnational mediasphere. Also, we contribute with an exploratory investigation of citizen media organizations' activities.;To do so, we conduct the first recorded Pan-African online survey on the work of international news reporters, collecting answers from 124 participants in 41 countries. These findings are complemented by in loco semi-structured interviews with 43 professionals based in Nairobi, Dakar and Johannesburg.;Our findings challenge the narrative of international news reporting as a dying breed. Instead, they support a nuanced view towards localized continuities and localized ruptures in contemporary post-industrial mediascape: socio-demographics express a considerably precarious new economy of foreign correspondence -- particularly, in the case of freelance workers -- while the use of network-based digital media is driving the field towards the rising of a multilayered confederacy of distinct correspondences.;The field it is no longer an exclusive territory of professionals and these have now to deal with an unprecedented scale of user-generated content and direct feedback. Professionals now spend a very considerable amount of daily time using the Internet. This suggests a paradigm shift in reporters' newsgathering practices and, ultimately, their epistemological culture.