ABSTRACT
Mabweazara (2014a: 2) remarks that research into the impact of new digital technologies on African journalism is scarce. Here, Mabweazara is referring to the mainstream African journalism in the colonial languages of English, French and Portuguese. While it may be true that research into digital mainstream African journalism is scarce, it is non-existent for the media operating in indigenous African languages. What are particularly lacking are detailed qualitative explorations of how newsrooms (and their journalists) are adjusting to the new digital context of practice. This study is an exploration into the ability of the African language press to adopt the digital technologies, and the extent they are able to do so. While this study is interested in a survey of the existence of websites for African language newspapers in general, the study will essentially focus on two of them: Alaroye (Nigeria, West Africa) and Isolezwe (South Africa, Southern Africa). The study is interested in knowing the extent to which African language newspapers are present online, the features of these selected online African language newspapers in terms of speed, structure, content, navigation and interactivity, the extent to which the selected African language newspapers appropriate social media such as Twitter and Facebook and how the editors/publishers of the newspapers assess the challenges of adopting digital technologies and the impact of the technologies on their journalism practice and operations? The study adopts content analysis and interviews for data gathering. Thematic analysis is adopted for data analysis. Some of the findings indicate that Isolezwe is much involved in digital journalism, while Alaroye has been quite hesitant to go substantially digital. Isolezwe, a title from the stable of Independent Newspapers, has a digital/social media policy tied to the general online policy of the parent company. It also has two staff responsible for its online content. These are the Live Editor and the Content Producer. The newspaper is also appropriating social media considerably for the dissemination of its news. Alaroye is still lagging behind in all these aspects because they still need to be “much more enlightened” about digital media.
