ABSTRACT
The survival of the printed newspaper in the digital age remains uncertain because the internet has emerged as an effective news delivery platform and a vibrant public sphere. The present challenge for most newspapers is to deliver news to their audiences on various digital platforms. This cross nation comparative study anchored on cultural discourse studies is concerned with digital journalism practice by indigenous African language newspapers (IALNs) in Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Using multicultural discourse analysis as the point of departure, the objective is to determine the context-specific and cultural factors that affect the deployment of digital technologies in the newswork process of small-scale and resource-constrained IALNs. We argue for the need to understand the discourse of digital journalism in Africa from a multicultural perspective which places context at the core and resists universal assumptions about the appropriation of digital technologies. Drawing from interviews with editors and journalists and online observations, this chapter reveals that IALNs adopt or reject digital journalism practices depending on their perceived usefulness and relevance to the operation context. The barriers to digital journalism by IALNs include several contextual, institutional and human agency factors, such as lack of prerequisite digital skills, conservative organisational cultures and resource constraints.
