Navigating between Protest Theatre and Journalism in Post-2000 Zimbabwe: A Study of All Systems Out of Order

Populism From Below and Social Movements: A Case of Zimbabwe’s #ThisFlag Movement

“…The perspective by Mugabe and the state that CSOs were fronts for an anti-ZANU-PF regime-change agenda supposedly driven by their Western donors meant to abet the MDC (Gutsa and Mandizadza, 2014) sustained a rift between the state, MDC, and pro-democratic activists. The paranoia by the state is somewhat valid since some of the CSOs relied on Western funding, thereby justifying Mugabe's populist rants (Nenjerama and Sibanda, 2019). The state-CSO dichotomy existed on an antagonistic basis: MDC and its supporters were imagined as democratic and viable substitutes for Mugabe's despotism.…”

Artistic Journalism: Confluence in Forms, Values and Practices

“…While it is true that an absence of aesthetics in journalism studies has been noted (Bird and Dardenne 2009;Coleman 2007;Gynnild et al 2017;Höijer 2004;Zelizer 2009), and both a general lack of as well as a pressing need for creativity has been a trope in the literature (Lynch and Swink 1967;Malmelin and Virta 2016;Deuze 2019), a comprehensive theory on news work as "artistic" seems not to have made it into the mainstream of journalism studies and education. Nash (2016) asked if journalism could be seen as art, but like Cramerotti (2009) he articulates a "journalistic turn" in the art world, rather than operationalising artistic journalism. Lewis and Zamith (2017) do assert that journalism is organised as an art worldwith reference to Becker (2008) however, they primarily refer to similarities in operational and organisational terms, not per se to the artistic nature of journalism.…”