Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy Lessons from Journalists in East Africa Journalism and Political Communication Unbound Series

Media scholars generally suggest that as people gain access to mass media content, they increasingly support democracy and reject authoritarian rule. Much of the scholarship classifying global media systems has overlooked the world's most developing nations, and among those that have included developing nations, there exists a misguided premise that nations develop in a linear fashion: from non-democracy to democracy, and from a restricted press to a free press. This book shows that much of what scholarship depicts about media systems of developing nations is wrong. In reality, the ebb-and-flow of political change, democratization and backsliding calls for more historically informed views of media systems that do not fit into the confines of existing theories. Using the perceptions of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya to examine mediascapes at varying stages of development and democracy-building, this book examines the advancement of media and press freedom at varying stages of national development. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and a cross-national survey, this book provides an updated state of press freedom in these three countries and shows how a nation's political and cultural intricacies complicate traditional media development frameworks and notions of press freedom. A detailed set of considerations are put forth for understanding media systems outside the Western world; specifically, that each country's distance from conflict, political benchmarks, international linkages, and civil society strength are central to understanding its degree of press freedom, development and democratization.

Meghan Sobel Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and the Master of Development Practice at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Cohen's research focuses on digital development and the role of news media in combating human rights abuses and humanitarian crises around the world, particularly in East Africa. She has given a TEDx talk about sex trafficking that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times and she has published in journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Communication, African Journalism Studies and International Communication Gazette. She has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A. from the University of Denver and B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Karen McIntyre Hopkinson is an Associate Professor of Multimedia Journalism and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Her international and interdisciplinary research focuses on journalism processes and effects. More specifically, she studies socially responsible forms of journalism, such as constructive journalism and solutions journalism. She also studies press freedom and journalism practice in East Africa and served as a Fulbright scholar in Rwanda during the 2018-19 academic year. Dr. McIntyre received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her master's from University of California, Berkeley, and her bachelor's from California State University, Chico. She has traveled to more than 40 countries and is originally from Lake Tahoe, California.