Abstract
Post-2000, Zimbabwe has witnessed a gradual shrinking of communicative space. In its efforts to control the narrative about the causes of the country’s multi-dimensional crisis, the ruling ZANU-PF government has used a gamut of legal and extra-judicial strategies to stifle press and other related freedoms. In this highly restrictive context, comedy has emerged as a viable source of information about events unfolding in the country as well as an alternative public sphere where counter-hegemonic discourses are ventilated by citizens who were previously excluded from the mainstream public sphere. Building on Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) studies on art and music as variants of journalism, our paper argues that comedy should be viewed as a variant of journalism in post-2000 Zimbabwe. We employ the normative roles of journalism, and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) concept of the alternative public sphere as our framework for examining how comedy, and more specifically Comic Pastor’s Monthly Comic Awards, has filled the void created by mainstream journalism by performing the journalistic function of communicating salient issues during the protracted Zimbabwean crisis. Our findings converge with, and broaden, Mpofu’s (2017) and Mano’s (2007) thesis that alternative sources of expression such as comedy should be viewed as journalism in crisis contexts. These findings also reinforce the need to expand traditional conceptions of journalism that narrowly limit the practice to traditional mass media.
References
Adam, G. S. (1993). Notes towards a definition of journalism: Understanding an old craft as an art form. The Poynter Papers (2), The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Altheide, D. L. (1996). Qualitative media analysis. Sage.
Baym, G. (2005). The Daily Show: Discursive integration and the reinvention of political journalism. Political Communication, 22(3), 259-276. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584600591006492
Bryman , A. (2004). Social Research Methods (2nd ed.) Oxford University Press.
Chikuni, P. R., Makwambeni, B., & Chigona, W. (2021). Dominant discourses informing e-learning policies in higher education institutions in South Africa. International Journal of Education and Development Using Information and Communication Technology, 17(4), 5-21.
Chitanana, T. (2020). From Kubatana to# ThisFlag: Trajectories of digital activism in Zimbabwe. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 17(2), 130-145. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1710644
Conboy, M. (2013). Journalism studies. Routledge.
Dahlgren, P. (1995). Television and the public sphere: Citizenship, democracy and the media. Sage.
Faina, J. (2013). Public journalism is a joke: The case for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Journalism, 14(4), 541-555. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488491244
Fox, J. (2018). Journalist or jokester? Political humor in a changing media landscape: A new generation of research. In J.C. Baumgartgner & A.B. Becker (Eds.), Political humour in a changing media landscape: A new generation of research (pp. 29-44). Lexington Books.
Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25(26), 56–80.
Gilboa, E. (2005). “Media-broker diplomacy: When journalists become mediators.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22 (2), 99–120. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180500071998
Gukurume, S. (2017). #ThisFlag and #ThisGown cyber protests in Zimbabwe: Reclaiming political space. African Journalism Studies, 38(2), 49–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2017.1354052
Habermas, J. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Polity Press.
Källstig, A. (2021). Laughing in the face of danger: Performativity and resistance in Zimbabwean stand-up comedy. Global Society, 35(1), 45-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295
Kuipers, G. (2008). The sociology of humor. In V. Raskin (Ed.). The primer of humor research (pp. 361-398), Humor Research 8. Walter De Gruyter.
Makwambeni, B. (2017). Zimbabwe dancehall music as a site of resistance. In U. Onyebadi (Ed.), Music as a platform for political communication. (pp. 238-256). IGI-Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/zimbabwe-dancehall-music-as-a-site-of-resistance/178016
Makwambeni, B, & Adebayo, O. J. (2021). Humor and the politics of the everyday: Reading amateur online videos in Zimbabwe as counter publics. In S. Mpofu (Ed.), The politics of laughter in the social media age. (pp. 155-173). Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-81969-9_8
Makwambeni, B., & Matsilele, T. (2024). South African media’s framing of the terrorist insurgency in Mozambique. World of Media. Journal of Russian Media and Journalism Studies, 1, 50-74. 10.30547/worldofmedia.1.2024.3
Makwambeni, B, & Sibiya, A. P. (2022). Accounting for the popularity of Black Panther among Black South African women in Soweto township. Image & Text, 36, 1-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a4
Mano, W. (2007). Popular music as journalism in Zimbabwe. Journalism Studies, 8(1), 61-78. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700601056858
Matsilele, T. (2013). The political role of the diaspora media in the mediation of the Zimbabwean crisis: A case study of the Zimbabwean-2008 to 2010. (Masters Thesis, Stellenbosch University).
Matsilele, T. (2019). Social media dissidence in Zimbabwe. (Doctoral Thesis, University of Johannesburg).
Matsilele, T., & Msimanga, M.J. (2022). Popular music and the concept of the dissident in post-independence Zimbabwe. In A. Salawu & Fedipe, I.A (Eds.) Indigenous African popular music. Vol. 2: Social crusades and the future (pp. 59-75). Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-98705-3_4
Matsilele, T., & Mututwa, W.T. (2021). The aesthetics of ‘laughing at power’ in an African cybersphere. In S. Mpofu (Ed.), The politics of laughter in the social media age: perspectives from the Global South (pp. 23-41), Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-81969-9_2
Mawere, T. (2020). The politics and symbolism of the# ThisFlag in Zimbabwe. The Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 42(1), 167-190. https://doi.org/10.35293/srsa.v42i1.202
Mhiripiri, N. A., & Mutsvairo, B. (2014). Social media, new ICTs the challenges facing the Zimbabwe democratic process. In Information Resources Management Association (Ed.), Crisis management: Concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications (pp. 1281–1301). IGI Global. https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/social-media-new-icts-and-the-challenges-facing-the-zimbabwe-democratic-process/90778
Moyo, D. (2007). Alternative media, diasporas, and the mediation of the Zimbabwe crisis. Ecquid Novi, 28(1-2), 81-105. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560054.2007.9653360
Mpofu, S. (2017). Art as journalism in Zimbabwe: The case of Owen Maseko’s banned Zimbabwean genocide exhibition. Journalism Studies, 20(1), 60-78. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1358652
Msimanga, M. J. (2022). Satire and the discursive construction of National Identity on online media platforms in Zimbabwe: A case study of Magamba and Bus Stop TV (Doctoral Thesis, University of Johannesburg).
Mungwari, T., Mapuranga, S., & Kembo, S. (2022). Reorganisation of news production in Zimbabwe during COVID-19. International Journal of Advanced Mass Communication and Journalism, 3(1), 8-15. https://www.masscomjournal.com/article/21/1-2-25-190.pdf
Örnebring, H., & Jönsson, M. A. (2004). Tabloid journalism and the public sphere: A historical perspective on tabloid journalism, Journalism Studies, 5(3), 283-295. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670042000246052
Palmer, J. (2003). Taking humour seriously. Routledge.
Ranger, T. 2017. The rise of patriotic journalism in Zimbabwe and its possible implications. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 2, 8-17. https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.38
Ruhanya, P. (2018). The plight of the private press during the Zimbabwe crisis (2010–18). Journal of African Media Studies, 10(2), 201-214.
Shapiro, I. (2017). Why democracies need a functional definition of journalism now more than ever. In B. Franklin (Ed.), The future of journalism: In an age of digital media and economic uncertainty (pp 98-108). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.882483
Sharra, A., & Matsilele, T. (2021). This is a laughing matter: Social media as a sphere of trolling power in Malawi and Zimbabwe. In Mpofu, S (Ed.), The politics of laughter in the social media age: Perspectives from the Global South (pp. 113-134). Palgrave Macmillan.
Spitulnik, D. (2002). Mobile machines and fluid audiences: Rethinking reception through Zambian radio culture. In F.D. Ginsburg., L. Abu-Lughod & B. Larkin (Eds.), Media worlds (pp. 337–354).University of California Press.
Tendi, B. M. (2008). Patriotic history and public intellectuals critical of power. Journal of Southern African Studies, 34(2), 379–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070802038041
Thompson, J. B. (1995). The media and modernity: A social theory of the media. Polity Press.
Tshuma, B. B., Tshuma, L. A., & Ndlovu, N. (2021). Humour, politics and Mnangagwa’s presidency: An analysis of readers’ comments in online news websites. In S. Mpofu (Ed.), The politics of laughter in the social media age: Perspectives from the Global South (pp. 93-111). Palgrave MacMillan.
Tshuma, L. A. (2023). Heir to the throne: photography and the rise to presidency by politicians in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Visual Studies, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2023.2246147
Willems, W. (2010). Beyond dramatic revolutions and grand rebellions: Everyday forms of resistance during the’ Zimbabwe crisis. Communicare, 29, 1–17. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC144882
Zelizer, B. (1993). Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 10(3), 219–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039309366865
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2024 The European Journal of Humour Research