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What are the roles of media actors in relation to civil society actors in advocacy campaigns, and what factors shape these roles? Interested in media strategies of civil society actors, the paper examines the advocacy for a ‘right to information’ law in Ghana. While journalists are obvious partners in pushing for the right to information, the civil society‐led advocacy encountered a passive media. Focused on mechanisms of engaging media actors as advocates in civil society‐led advocacy, this study relies on interviews with key actors in the advocacy campaign and textual analysis of news coverage, spanning 2010–2019. The paper posits that mainly two factors contributed to the media taking a more active role in the campaign; the Civil Society Organisations changed their approach and how they communicated and related to media actors, and media actors developed more awareness and understanding of the advocacy issue. Two important main mechanisms are uncovered in this study. First, it matters how civil society actors perceive of media actors in their media strategy, and how this in turn is received by media actors. Second, when CSOs seek to engage media as partners, it is necessary to also give room for their ownership and advocacy as independent partners.

Ghana remains one of the few countries on the continent where elites have not deliberately employed legal mechanisms to restrict contestation and participation rights or to lock out the opposition from the electoral playing field. At the same time, the country’s political elites have also actively resisted legal reforms aiming to deepen democratic developments beyond holding elections. Thus, while Ghana has made steady and incremental progress toward democratic consolidation since 1992, the quality of the country’s democracy has stagnated. The chapter argues that Ghana’s political elites have sought to limit further democratization and actively worked to constrain actors promoting enhanced democratization. They have done so primarily through the strategic use of law, including a seeming unwillingness to adopt progressive legal measures that would expand participatory rights. Ghana’s political elites have resisted efforts to restrict executive power, as manifested in continued failures to implement needed constitutional reforms, and they have delayed adopting and implementing key civil liberties legislation to improve minority rights and actively attacked media pluralism and freedoms. Ultimately, this undermines the country’s democracy as elites consolidate power and as popular trust erodes in the key institutions underpinning Ghana’s democracy.

Public opinion polls conducted over the past five years point to a downward trend in African citizens' support for civil society and media freedoms. This is despite the flourishing of civil society and media actors as well as the expansion of democracy on the continent in the post-Cold War period. What explains this downward trend in public support? We use cross-national polling data from the Afrobarometer survey to examine the decline in public support for freedoms of association and media between 2011 and 2018 in the African context, a continent that has experienced decades of democratization waves and pressure. Using a multilevel statistical modelling approach, we analyse the influence of government repression of civil society and media actors on citizen support for enhanced government control over freedoms of association and the media. Our study shows that the government's repressive actions against civil society and media actors increases the probability that citizens will support control over association and media freedoms. Concerningly, this suggests government clampdowns on democratic rights influences the African publics to support such clampdowns, potentially legitimizing them.