Books

The Ethics of Engagement: Media, Conflict and Democracy in Africa

Available for Pre-Order

Combines journalism theory, cultural studies and political studies as theoretical frameworks

Critiques existing normative frameworks for the media and professional ethics and proposes a new framework, an “ethics of listening

Brings together a range of examples of democratization conflicts from different countries in the continent to build an argument about the media’s role in African democracies

Media, Geopolitics, and Power: A View from the Global South (University of Illinois Press, 2018)

“Wasserman shines a bright light on the changing media’s role and journalism practice during the transition to democracy in South Africa….A must-read for all who want to understand South Africa’s embrace of democracy and the political economy of communication therein.” – The Journalist

“Wasserman’s book offers a rich and insightful account of the South African media in the context of shifting centres of global power and knowledge production. While focusing on the South African transition, the book demonstrates the close interrelationship between the local and the global, between the dominance of the advanced democracies of the West and the struggles of the Global South for recognition and influence. By taking the perspective of the Global South, familiar concepts such as citizenship, tabloidization, and mediation are put in a new light, thus enriching our theoretical and empirical understanding of the role of the media in a changing world.” – Katrin Voltmer, author of Comparing Political Communication across Time and Space: New Studies in an Emerging Field

“Wasserman’s book would surely be deemed as one of the most powerful articulations from the Global South, urging media professionals and scholars to rethink and recontextualize global journalism in this post-West, post-order, post-truth world.” – Anbin Shi, Tsinghua University

AWARDS

Book of the Year Award 2019, Global Communication and Social Change Division, International Communication Association

REVIEWS

Herman Wasserman’s book: Media, Geopolitics and Power: a view from the Global South is an important contribution, written in an accessible style which students and academics – both local and global – can benefit from.
Daily Maverick

Herman Wasserman’s Media, Geopolitics and Power, the seventh volume in the Geopolitics of Information series published by the University of Illinois Press, makes a point of taking both a step back toward the broader scope of journalism studies and a step forward toward the rigorous application of a political economy perspective to the analysis of the distance that South Africa media has traveled from the apartheid era.
The Journalist

INTERVIEWS