Profs Relly, Zanger publish Afghan news media study

Oct. 4, 2016
Image
combined headshots of Jeannine Relly and Maggie Zanger

Journalism Professors Jeannine Relly and Maggie Zanger

 

Professors Jeannine Relly and Maggy Zanger have published their research about the development of news media in Afghanistan, detailing the perils and challenges faced by journalists in the country's unstable environment.

The professors' study, “The enigma of news media development with multi-pronged ‘capture’: The Afghanistan case,” was published online in the academic journal, Journalism, and will follow in print at a later date.

The study included 30 interviews with Afghan journalists in the capital of Kabul, conducted by the professors' research assistant, Noorullah Dawari, who is fluent in the Dari, English and Pashto languages.

Here is the study's abstract:

"This qualitative study of influences on a purposive sample of Afghan journalists was carried out in the year after the U.S. military mission was declared over. After more than a $100 million of Western government funding had been invested in development of liberal democratic journalism, the study found the paradox of news media ‘capture’. We conceptualize this phenomenon further into political, bureaucratic, foreign-donor, and violent-actor capture.

"The study concludes that in countries with heavy foreign intervention, where imported journalism values are layered upon previous and continued institutional arrangements and where violence and instability continue unabated, news media work is prone to ‘capture’ by a variety of actors outside media organizations. We suggest that future research could refine a typology with six distinct forms of capture – economic, political, cultural, legal, bureaucratic, and societal."

Read the study online