COVID-19 and the Media in Sub-Saharan Africa: Media Viability, Framing and Health Communication

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 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.

The study explores how economic factors influenced the coverage of COVID-19 in a privately owned commercial radio, Central Broadcasting Service (CBS), in Uganda. The station was selected mainly because it is one of the biggest radio stations in Uganda in terms of influence and audience reach. In addition, CBS is one of the few radio stations which carry elaborate news bulletins in the country. Most of the other stations put more emphasis on entertainment and only carry news as briefs. Since the liberalisation of airwaves in Uganda in 1993, a lot of research has been conducted on the performance and influence of commercial radio. However, there is little scholarship on the influence of economic factors on the coverage of health crises by commercial radio. The study employs the Critical Political Economy and Framing theories to understand how stories about COVID-19 were framed and the motivations for the identified frames. Quantitative content analysis was used for this study. The study found that the economic imperative influenced the frames chosen by reporters and editors at CBS during the coverage of COVID-19.

COVID-19 affected all global activities. The print media industry was one of the affected fields. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 brought to the Ethiopian newspapers. Political Economy of Media theory is used to analyse data obtained from documents and in-depth interviews with managers of two leading media houses; the government-owned Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) and the private Capital newspaper. The findings show that print media faced two key challenges. First, their circulation decreased due to the COVID-19 as a result of the economic recession. This was compounded by the second challenge, based on the fact that not only don’t these newspapers own printers, they also lack a established formal distribution infrastructure. As a result, they still had to pay highly for printing while selling copies at a reduced price. However, media hybridisation, innovative projects, and sponsored pages helped the newspapers stay on the market. This study recommends that newspaper publishers run their printing machines, expand the media technology, change the attitude of print journalists, and capacitate them to utilise media hybridisation as important solutions.

This chapter interrogates the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on print newspaper industry in Zimbabwe. COVID-19 affected the global economy due to various lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by governments in attempt to stop the spread of the virus. This severely affected media houses, especially newspaper companies that depended on sales as their potential customers stayed home. The pandemic came against the backdrop of constant changes affecting the print media industry. Digitalisation and the resultant fragmentation of the audiences affect the way audiences consume media products. Against this milieu, this chapter investigates how these changes affected or shielded media houses from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two leading newspaper companies in Zimbabwe, Alpha Media Holdings and Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (1980) Ltd are used as case studies. The chapter deploys both the critical tradition to the study of media economics (political economy of the media) and the theory of the firm to argue that the traditional economic model of depending on casual sales for survival is outdated. The chapter documents the adverse effects of the pandemic on journalism practice highlighting how the impact was more pronounced in the privately owned newspaper companies than in government-controlled ones.

This chapter investigates the status of urban youths’ knowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic and related prevention measures; their sources of information about COVID-19 and their trust in sources of information about COVID-19; credibility of urban youths’ sources of information about COVID-19; related prevention measures and the effect of the above on urban youths’ attitudes towards the adoption of preventive measures against COVID-19. An online survey and three focus group interviews were conducted to collect data. Results indicated that although the majority of young people in urban Uganda were knowledgeable about COVID-19, they also held various misconceptions about it yet this presence of cognitive dissonance, did not negatively affect their adoption of preventive measures. Instead, it worked as a motivator to find more information for change.

Fear appeals are persuasive messages that attempt to arouse fear to motivate or influence behaviour change and are widely used in health promotion. This chapter analyses how fear appeal messaging was used by the Namibian and South African mainstream print media to communicate COVID-19 during the two countries’ main waves of the pandemic. Specifically, we examine the framing strategies that the media used to persuade behaviour change. Mainstream media has enormous potential to influence health-related behaviour and perceptions. Therefore, it is compelling to examine the mainstream media’s framing of COVID-19. This study draws on framing theory to examine media frames and the use of fear appeal in the coverage of COVID-19 in the top English-language newspapers in the two countries. We argue in this chapter that using fear appeals in public health communication by the media may be counterproductive as a tool of persuasion.

This chapter surveyed how the Daily Monitor and New Vision newspapers in Uganda framed discourse surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic was given massive media coverage in Uganda, as around the globe. It is of interest to examine the coverage and draw lessons for future reference. We considered Uganda as an interesting case due to its initial success in managing the spread of the pandemic (Sarki, Ezeh, & Stranges, 2020). This chapter aimed to analyse the coverage of the pandemic through the lens of framing theory. The chapter presents a content analysis of selected published material from their online sites in the two newspapers between 10 March and 2 June 2020. The dates start with lockdown in Uganda and end with lockdown’s partial lifting. The study revealed several interesting news frames that included a western versus national frame, preparedness frame, economic frame, religious frame and other emerging news frames like solidarity, police enforcement and self-reflection. The main conclusion is that the two major dailies actively informed the public about COVID-19 and made some attempts to cover issues around the impact of COVID-19 on society.

As Africa’s internet penetration rates increase, and a significant portion of the continent’s population turns to social media as a source of news, platforms like Facebook are increasingly becoming crucial for political, public health, and risk communication. Thus, it is useful to gain insights into how state authorities are using these platforms to communicate with citizens especially in times of crisis. This study sought to examine how state authorities in Ethiopia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe framed public crisis communication on Facebook during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the respective countries. Qualitative content analysis of Facebook posts by the state authorities in the four countries over a six-week period before and after the COVID-19 lockdowns yielded several frames or strategies employed by authorities in the case countries. These included; education, caution, cooperation, government measures, hope, nationalism, and scaremongering. Other frames included impact, militarisation, politicisation, and religion. The analysis establishes, as in several other countries, Facebook as a current and strategic choice in state-spearheaded crisis communication. Whereas the main frames were globally and regionally driven, other frames encapsulated national contexts drawing on national histories, patriotism, hopes and fears that sometimes seemed contradictory and capricious.

In the midst of a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists play an important role of sharing information of consequence with the public. As first responders to precarious events, they work in close proximity to the threat they are reporting on yet at the same time struggle with other personal and professional responsibilities which are strenuous on their mental health. This chapter qualitatively interrogated journalists in order to understand their experiences with mental health during COVID-19 and how they worked through personal and social acceptability, biases and stigma as well as diagnosis. Of importance as well was to understand how they disclose, if they disclose at all, mental health issues and the different copying mechanisms. Findings show that journalists have a textbook but not applicable understanding of mental health, declaring that they many of them have experienced mental disorders without knowing. The consequences of COVID-19 measures such as layoffs, increased workload, inconsiderate media houses, brutality from law enforcement agencies were key contributors to mental health stresses. Journalists with supportive families seemed to have coped better while some buried themselves in multiple jobs to circumvent the stress that comes with financial privation.

The Coronavirus pandemic in South Africa resulted in negative effects with high infection rates, health care shortages, increases in death rates, plus a collapsing economy. There was an urgent need for precautionary health promotional campaigns to educate populations about the virus. However, with South Africa’s diverse population cultural beliefs, socio-cultural aspects needed to be catered for. Health literacy also had to be considered for effective positive behaviour change patterns to occur. Social barriers such as misinformation, stigma, myths, anxiety and prejudice resulted into infodemics emerging in the population. Media representation about the pandemic needed to ensure truthful and authentic information reached target audiences. Specific examples related to religious beliefs (the Chief Justice Mogeng Mogeng) and cultural remedies (Madagascar’s artemisia or “green gold”) are included in this chapter, to elaborate examples of such cases in South Africa, with no audience engagement analysed. Two health promotional campaigns, Count Me In and We will beat this are analysed via a qualitative multimodal analysis. Behaviour change communication theories are included to triangulate and validate the findings. Findings indicated that health campaigns need to cater for socio-cultural diversities and be audience specific in order for adequate behaviour change to occur, via clear health messages.

Vaccination became a vital tool in the prevention against COVID-19 worldwide. The government of Uganda rolled out its first phase of vaccination in March 2021, targeting specific prioritised groups including health workers, armed personnel and teachers among others. Amidst the struggles to procure, administer and convince people about the safety of the vaccine, various, and at times seemingly credible influences came up to warn people against being vaccinated. Different reasons, specifically with regard to safety were raised by critiques and as such, some people including those in priority groups opted out of taking the vaccine. Due to this ambivalence in regard to COVID-19 vaccination, in 2021, government directed that all teachers who had not been vaccinated should not be allowed in schools upon reopening in 2022. This mixed approach study therefore, interrogated how teachers, as part of the priority groups, perceived of COVID-19 related vaccination, what level of knowledge they had about COVID-19 vaccination and their sources of information. In addition, tests were done to find out how perception and attitudes, level of knowledge and sources of information affected uptake of COVID-19 vaccines. Results indicate that teachers hold different conflicting views about COVID-19 vaccines. That although the majority get their information from traditional media, they have doubts, doubts about the cause and origin of COVID-19, about the intent behind vaccination and about their leaders.

This chapter takes up the discourse on marginalisation and ‘othering’ surrounding information and communication among the African diaspora in Norway during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. Following the Norwegian Health Directorate (FHI)’s (2020, 2021) concerns about the statistically higher number of infections among immigrant groups, the chapter unpacks the dynamics surrounding this group’s information access and use during lockdown. The chapter explores ‘public institution’ informational initiatives targeting immigrants at local levels and experiences of individual immigrants outside the public institution. Theories on media representation, otherness and trans-national communication were harnessed to analyse data generated qualitatively. While individual experiences were fragmented and diverse, ‘otherness’ and disadvantage on the basis of socio-cultural, economic and political marginality emerged with nuances depending on stratified contexts such as age, educational, nationality, religion. Public institutional efforts were experienced as necessary and valuable but insufficient in fully combating fear, uncertainty and confusion among the immigrants. These, mainly top-down interpretations of national and local directives and statistics, were thus supplemented with alternative and contra sources of information to feed fragmented immigrant informational needs.