The problems of utilizing professional journalism in Uganda

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Date
2014-04
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Abstract
This study empirically examines the professional role professional journalists in Uganda in the context of the country’s democratization process. The finding of the study show that Uganda professional journalists basically see themselves as working for the public interest mainly through serving the people and challenging the powerful. On the basis of these findings the article ends with reflections on the need to rethink the prevailing approach in strategies to empower journalists in Uganda process in Kampala District. For a media profession so central to society’s sense of self, it is of crucial importance to understand the influences of changing labour conditions, professional cultures, and the appropriation of technologies on the nature of work in journalism. In this paper, the various strands of international research on the changing nature of journalism as a profession are synthesized, using media logic as developed by Altheide and Snow (1979 and 1991) and updated by Dahlgren (1996) as a conceptual framework. A theoretical key to understanding and explaining journalism as a profession is furthermore to focus on the complexities of concurrent disruptive developments affecting its performance from the distinct perspective of its practitioners — for without them, there is no news. Media Logic Media work in general and journalism in particular takes place both within and outside of institutions (including salaried employees and an army of stringers and freelancers), by both professionals and amateurs (including so-called ‘citizen media’), both within and across particular media (especially considering converged newsrooms). In order to adequately describe and analyze the various ways in which practitioners in journalism are affected by and give meaning to such a complex environment of cultural production, one needs a holistic, integrated perspective on the nature of media work. In this context I use the concept of ‘media logic’, more specifically as taken up and developed by Dahlgren, where he refers to media logic as ‘the particular
Description
A research proposal submitted to the College Of Humanities and Social Science in the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor’s Degree in Mass Communication of Kampala International University
Keywords
Journalism, Uganda
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