On Friday 17 November at 09h00, one of our very own researchers from the Policy and Quality Unit, Sarah Findlay, will be presenting some of our latest research looking at how social media and digital technology have impacted on newsrooms and journalism quality in South Africa.

This research is the first of its kind in the country and it attempts to unpack the effects that the digital revolution is having on the types of news stories journalists are producing and therefore the types of stories that audiences are consuming. Importantly, too, the findings explore how the Farlam Commission (looking into the Marikana Massacre) and the Xenophobic attacks of 2015 were covered in the media and these results point to some of the clear ways in which technology has not shifted historical biases of whose voices we hear the most in the media at all.

This makes for some essential reading as we try to navigate the new challenges the media sector currently face and the full report will be made available to the public for free after at the conference.

See here for more about the GIJC: https://gijc2017.org/

The panel at which this research is being presented: http://bit.ly/2hBqlr7