Ruth Moon, PhD
Welcome! I am an assistant professor of media and public affairs at Louisiana State University. I study power relationships and knowledge production with a focus on journalism practice in authoritarian contexts in the Global South. I have published research in Digital Journalism, Journalism Studies, Journalism, Information, Communication & Society, African Journalism Studies, International Journal of Communication, and other journals. My first book was published in 2023 (read more about this below). My research is informed by more than 10 years’ professional journalism experience.
One of my most recent articles, published in Journalism Studies and coauthored with Soheil Kafiliveyjuyeh and Feyyaz Firat, examines the ways journalists in Turkey talk about social media adoption. You can read it here.
Authoritarian Journalism
My first book, Authoritarian Journalism, was published in 2023 with Oxford University Press (you can buy it here). It has been reviewed in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Communication, and Newspaper Research Journal. Here are a few nice things people have said about it:
In Authoritarian Journalism: Controlling the News in Post-Conflict Rwanda, Ruth Moon has produced a riveting ‘insider’ perspective that throws into sharp relief the nuances of the operations of the press in a restrictive African political environment. She confronts deeply ingrained sweeping assumptions on journalism in Rwanda (and related African authoritarian contexts) and offers a stellar intervention that shows how journalism, and its inner workings vary considerably across the globe.
The book boldly contests the blanket application of mainstream journalism's Anglo-American canons which are commonly applied with an underlying assumption of global normative homogeneity often dismissive of ‘journalism on the periphery’.
It presents unique insights that go beyond the typical tokenistic discourses of the ‘internationalising’ or ‘de-Westernising’ media debates to foregrounding the centrality of the social contingency of journalism as a social practice. In doing so, the book highlights how journalism as a social practice is shaped and coloured by local factors that challenge and throw into question the sweeping hegemony of Western professional ideologies, including the core principles and values that we often read about in mainstream journalism scholarship.
If the ultimate test of the impact of a journalism scholarly book is its transformative potential both to the discipline and on practice and policy, then Authoritarian Journalism can clearly be counted among such innovative pieces of scholarly work. The book is a must read for anyone with a keen interest in understanding the multiple complexities of African journalism in ways that have not been captured in contemporary journalism studies.
Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara, Senior Lecturer in Media Sociology, University of Glasgow, UK