Ecologies of Global Risk Journalism: Conceptualizing Local Journalism in an Era of Deep Disruptions

This volume investigates the practice and challenges of journalism addressing globalized risk from various world regions.

With chapters written by members of the Global Risk Journalism Hub, an international research network of leading scholars from the Global North and Global South, this collection brings together international journalism researchers from a wide range of theoretical and methodological backgrounds to uncover key issues of "global risk journalism" within their regional contexts. Using the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic as a point of departure, this book explores the effect of digital platforms on news production, how the reporting of these transnational emergencies affects the misinformation ecosystem, the power relations between global and local news sources and the ethics of conducting research in the face of globalized crises.

This truly international and comparative volume will interest researchers and students of global and local journalism, risk journalism, journalism practice, media and communication studies, intercultural communication, political science and sociology.

Ingrid Volkmer, Professor, University of Melbourne, specializes in globalized communication, transnational public communication, and digital policy. She has published widely in this area. Her work on globalization and journalism has a focus on globalized risks and the way journalists communicate the globalized crisis dimension. Among her publications in this area is the book ‘Risk Journalism – between transnational politics and climate change’ with Kasim Sharif (2018).

Bruce Mutsvairo is a Professor in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has authored and edited several books on journalism and media and studies the development of journalism in non-Western societies.

Saba Bebawi is Professor of Journalism and Dean of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. She has published on the role of digital journalism within social, cultural, and economic frameworks of news‑making, particularly in relation to democracy building and the Global South. Bebawi is author of ‘Media Power and Global Television News: The role of Al Jazeera English’, ‘Investigative Journalism in the Arab World: Issues and Challenges’, and co‑author of ‘The Future Foreign Correspondent’.

Ansgard Heinrich is Associate Professor of Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She specializes in the study of contemporary journalistic practice, and her primary research interests include global conflict reporting, digital disinformation and social media use in journalism.

Antonio Castillo is a journalist and academic who teaches journalism and supervises postgraduate students at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of “Journalism in the Chilean Transition to Democracy” and co-author of “Cosmopolitan Sydney”. His forthcoming book, “Up to the Neck in Contradictions”, is a journalistic work that delves into the last few decades of Latin American society.