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