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This chapter explores how feminist and women-owned media/organisations in Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania navigated the impact of COVID-19. Three debilitating realities contextualise this study. The first is the fact that feminist media find themselves trapped in a global existential struggle following the steady collapse of traditional media’s economic models. Second, women’s owned media by their nature are marginal and undermined by hegemonic patriarchal power structures and third, COVID-19 spared no media. The pandemic devastated the media industry globally especially print, and community-owned media such as women’s owned media. The chapter is informed by political economy of feminist media theories with a main focus on principles of media viability. It draws from interviews with managers and senior reporters at leading feminist and women-owned media/organisations in the three countries. The findings shed light on how operations, human resources, content and financial sustainability were navigated and reshaped in a flawed health, political and socio-cultural systemic context that threatened to annihilate the case media. We highlighted the innovative solutions and resolve indicative of the resilience, determination and agency that these women-owned media/organisations exercised in the face of the crisis at the time, something others can learn from.

Digital media platforms in Uganda experimented with subscription-based models as an alternative to the traditional advertising model and as a recovery plan from the effects of COVID-19. Drawing from the theory of the political economy of the media, this study focusses on the critical success factors for subscription-based models in digital media platforms, audience consumption habits vis-á-vis payment for content, the effect of paywalls on the company financials and finally, establish the barriers to subscription uptake in Uganda. Media started charging users subscription fees for content in the 1990s (Chyi, 2005). Technological advances changed audience consumption habits from consuming hardcopy newspapers to accessing content on the go through their smartphones, tablets, and computers (Berger, Matt, Steininger, & Hess, 2015). Whilst some consumers pay for content, several audience surveys in East Africa indicated a lack of consistency among the paying audiences (KARF, 2019). Most consumers never purchased subscription and were avert to paywalls. The study used a mixed-method approach to find that the increase in internet penetration in Uganda and smartphone usage were the most significant enablers of paid-content consumption in Uganda. The quality of content, poor packaging, and unfair prices by publishers were the biggest barriers to consumption of paid news content.

This paper analyses the media ownership of professional sports teams. The theory of vertical integration is used to identify internal efficiency gains, lower uncertainty and increased market power as general explanations. The industryspecific reasons are examined, particularly the importance of securing access to broadcasting rights. The potential implications for teams, leagues and fans are discussed. It is suggested that media ownership of teams may undermine the sporting and financial viability of leagues thus necessitating intervention by sports administrators and government regulators.

The purpose of this paper is to test the viability of the media relations framework, Mediating the Media model (Pang, 2010), and ascertains its relevance to practitioners in a changing media landscape in Singapore where social media is emerging as an alternative source of information tool.

In-depth interviews with 20 media relations practitioners who were former journalists. Practitioners with journalism experience were chosen as they perform better at media relations (Sallot and Johnson, 2006a; Sinaga and Callison, 2008).

The model posits two sets of influences, i.e. internal (journalist mindset, journalist routines and newsroom routines) and external (extra-media forces and media ideology) in media relations. Internal influences were found to be more prevalent than external influences and journalist mindset was the most pervasive factor influencing media relations.

Findings are based solely on interviews and some claims cannot be corroborated. As this is a qualitative study situated in one country, it is also not generalizable.

This study will serve useful insights for new practitioners to approach media relations in a holistic and systematic manner and for seasoned practitioners to re-evaluate their current media strategies.

This inaugural test found rigor in the model, and affords an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of journalist-practitioner relationships in a changing media landscape. It also presents an intriguing opportunity for the model to be applied to countries where the media industry operates under vastly different environments so as to ensure that the model stands up to scrutiny as it seeks to be positioned as a viable model for media relations.

This chapter discusses the growing use of social media during election campaigns in Ghana. It examines how social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter became preferred tools for voter engagement, mobilisation and campaign for political parties and their presidential and parliamentary candidates in the 2020 elections in Ghana. It establishes that social media are gradually surpassing traditional/legacy media as the preferred media choice for political mobilisation, civic engagement and political communication in Ghana. The chapter reviews the European Union Election Observation Mission (EOM) report through social media affordance lens. This chapter attempts to answer two critical questions: To what extent did political parties and presidential candidates in Ghana use social media in electioneering campaigns during the 2020 elections and, which social media platforms were highly preferred by political parties and presidential candidates in engaging the electorate? The EOM's data indicators show the prominence of Facebook and Twitter as significant in political party campaigns during the period under study. Preliminary analysis also points out that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their presidential candidate, Nana Akufo Addo including the opposition National Democratic Congress and their leader, John Dramani Mahama, spent thousands of dollars on Facebook advertisements for extensive voter mobilisation.