Development Assistance and independent journalism in Africa and Latin America: A cross-national and multidisciplinary research network. (HN)

该项目提出了一个国际跨学科研究网络，以探讨国际发展援助与非洲和拉丁美洲当地新闻实践和培训之间的关系。该网络将使研究人员能够研究对外援助的全球权力关系和地缘政治，自第二次世界大战结束以来，对外援助的主要目的是传播符合捐助国利益的特定新闻实践和教育模式。它将考虑以美国/英国为基础的新闻实践模式的传播在多大程度上对国际发展的“现代化”项目起到了核心作用。这个网络项目与新闻实践、新闻教育和批判性新闻研究相联系，背景是外国援助/发展援助在这些地区产生的影响，以及这种影响如何影响这些发展中地区培养批判性和独立媒体部门的能力。鉴于全球新闻媒体格局的巨大当代变化，特别是在新闻实践方面，以及真正独立的“监督”新闻业的潜力有限，研究人员和从业人员需要批判性地重新评估外部影响对新闻业的影响与当地新闻文化和做法之间的关系。这种对发展中区域公共话语性质的审议评估的贡献有可能向更多不同的声音开放公共领域，并有助于民主化项目。在这种情况下，更多地与艺术和人文科学研究联系在一起的批判性学术方法，而不是更典型的社会科学方法，对新闻的分析特别有价值。我们建议召集一个研究人员网络，他们能够以批判性政治经济学和后殖民研究方法为基础，对拉丁美洲和非洲国际发展援助对当地新闻部门的历史和现实贡献提出批评意见。该网络将促进关于利用国际发展援助以及广泛地讲后殖民时期依附结构的讨论和研究(东区，2006年)，以促进或抑制特定的新闻模式。我们首先假设，自上世纪40年代末以来，美英新闻业范式的传播是国际援助努力的核心，已成为援助计划倾向于培育和支持的默认模式。冷战时期的地缘政治，以及最近的企业议程，都让这种模式成了问题。此外，这些模式并不是在没有矛盾的情况下出现的，因为美国和其他西方国家在冷战背景下为发展中国家的独裁政权提供了支持，以遏制苏联的推进(尤其是拉丁美洲和非洲，它们是这个网络的大陆焦点)。因此，另一个令人感兴趣的问题是，美苏对抗的结束如何重塑(或不重塑)新闻业现代化、多元化和独立性的对外援助。我们的网络最初将把英国学术研究人员与两个非洲国家和两个南美国家的知名新闻研究人员和教育工作者联系起来，每个国家都得到了英国官方的发展援助。这些国家中的每一个都有多样化和充满活力的媒体和民间社会部门，我们的学术参与者与这些部门建立了良好的联系。这些国家是加纳、南非、巴西和委内瑞拉，但我们的参与者也是他们国家周围更广泛地区的领先新闻专家，并处于有利地位，可以在他们的地区扩大网络。

This project proposes an international and inter-disciplinary research network to explore the relationship between international development aid and local journalistic practice and training in Africa and Latin America. The network will allow researchers to examine the global power relations and geo-politics of foreign aid that since the end of the Second World War was substantially directed at disseminating a specific model of journalism practice and education aligned with the interests of donor nations. It will consider the extent to which the diffusion of a US/UK based model of journalism practice has been central to the 'modernisation' project in international development. This network project is linked to journalism practice, journalism education, and critical journalism studies in the context of the impact that foreign aid/development assistance has had in these regions and how this has affected the ability of these developing regions to foster a critical and independent media sector.Given massive contemporary change in the global news media landscape, especially in regard to journalistic practice and the limited potential for genuinely independent 'watchdog' journalism, researchers and practitioners need to critically re-assess the relationship between external influences on journalism and local cultures and practices of journalism. This contribution to a deliberative assessment of the nature of public discourse in developing regions has the potential to open the public sphere to a greater variety of voices and aid the project of democratization. In this context, the critical scholarly approaches more commonly associated with arts and humanities research than with the more typically social scientific approaches to the analysis of journalism are particularly valuable. We propose to bring together a network of researchers who can provide critique grounded in critical political economy and postcolonial studies approaches to the historical and present contribution to the local journalism sector of international development aid in Latin America and Africa. The network will foster discussion and research concerning the use of international development aid and, broadly, structures of post-colonial dependency (Easterly 2006), to promote or inhibit specific models of journalism. We start from the assumption that the dissemination of the US/UK paradigm of journalism was central to international aid efforts since the late 1940s and has become the default model that aid programmes tend to foster and support. Such models have been problematized by the geo-politics of the Cold War and more recently by corporative agendas. Moreover, these models have not come into existence without their own contradictions, given the support that the US and other Western countries gave to dictatorships in developing countries in the context of Cold War efforts to contain the advance of the Soviet Union (this is particularly true of Latin America and Africa, the continental foci of this network). A further interest, therefore, is the question of how the end of the US-USSR confrontation re-shaped (or not) foreign aid towards journalism modernisation, diversification, and independence. Our network will initially link UK academic researchers with prominent journalism researchers and educators in two African countries and two South America countries, each of which receive UK Official Development Assistance. Each of these countries has diverse and vibrant media and civil society sectors with which our academic participants are well connected. These countries are Ghana, South Africa, Brazil, and Venezuela, but our participants are also leading experts on journalism in the broader regions around their countries and well placed to extend the network in their regions.