The Nairobi Hub: Emerging patterns of how foreign correspondents frame citizen journalists and social media

Abstract

A sizable portion of our everyday knowledge about sub-Saharan Africa comes from the work of international news reporters on the continent. The profession of foreign correspondent constituted itself around a group of privileged witnesses of history, often immersed in a mythological aura, but the emergence of digital media has established some tension around a destructuration-restructuration of the journalistic field. The rhetoric of the pro-am revolution signifies the end of an era for international journalism due to the rise of citizen journalism. This research assesses how professional international news reporters are repositioning themselves in a transforming communicative environment, and how they interpret their own occupation and the role of rising actors in the transnational mediasphere.

Keywords:

• citizen journalism
• foreign correspondents
• international news reporting
• multi-dimensional network of correspondences
• networked journalism
• social media