Sahel International Journal of Mass Communication and Media Studies

The Sahel International Journal of Mass Communication and Media Studies (SIJMCMS) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal publishing rigorous and socially relevant scholarship on communication, journalism, media, culture and society. The journal provides a global platform for researchers, educators, media professionals, policymakers and civil-society actors to examine how communication systems, technologies, institutions, texts and audiences shape public life.

SIJMCMS welcomes theoretically informed, methodologically sound and ethically conducted research from all regions of the world. It has a particular interest in Africa and the Sahel, including scholarship that places experiences from these regions in comparative and global perspective. The journal does not privilege any country, institution, methodological tradition, medium or political position.

About the Journal

SIJMCMS is an interdisciplinary scholarly journal established to advance research and informed debate on communication processes, journalism, media institutions, digital technologies, cultural production, public discourse and audience experience. It publishes work that develops and tests theory, produces credible empirical evidence, interrogates professional practice, improves research methods and translates findings into meaningful lessons for scholarship, policy and society.

Contemporary communication crosses platforms, sectors and national boundaries. SIJMCMS therefore welcomes contributions from mass communication, journalism studies, media and cultural studies, political communication, strategic communication, development communication, film and broadcasting, digital media, information science, sociology, linguistics, psychology, economics, law and related fields. The journal values methodological pluralism: surveys, experiments, content and discourse analysis, ethnography, interviews, digital methods, computational analysis, historical inquiry, comparative research and mixed methods are considered when appropriately designed, transparently reported and rigorously applied.

Although SIJMCMS has a distinctive commitment to research concerning Africa and the Sahel, its remit is global. The journal encourages North-South, South-South and cross-regional scholarship and seeks to counter the marginalisation of knowledge produced in developing, multilingual and conflict-affected settings. Regional relevance alone is not sufficient for publication. Every article must articulate a clear research problem, engage the relevant literature, employ a defensible method and make a contribution that extends beyond the immediate case.

Ownership, Management and Editorial Independence

SIJMCMS is owned and published by Sahel Academic Publishing Ltd. The publisher provides administrative, production and technical support but does not determine the conclusions of articles or interfere with individual editorial decisions. The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for the journal’s scholarly content and acts through an Editorial Board whose members are selected for relevant expertise, integrity and diversity. Commercial considerations, advertising, sponsorship and institutional relationships shall not influence editorial decisions.

Aim and Editorial Mission

SIJMCMS aims to be a trusted international forum for original research and critical scholarship that advances knowledge, policy and professional practice in mass communication and media studies. Its editorial mission is to publish work that is conceptually clear, empirically credible, ethically responsible, socially relevant and accessible to scholarly and professional audiences.

Objectives

SIJMCMS seeks to:

1. publish original empirical, theoretical, historical and methodological contributions in mass communication and media studies;
2. deepen understanding of media institutions, technologies, content, audiences, professions and communication processes;
3. connect scholarly inquiry with consequential questions of democracy, development, culture, identity, public trust, inclusion and social change;
4. encourage comparative, interdisciplinary and context-sensitive research;
5. strengthen the international visibility of high-quality scholarship from Africa, the Sahel and other underrepresented regions;
6. facilitate responsible knowledge exchange among researchers, journalists, media organisations, policymakers and civil society;
7. advance transparent, reproducible and ethically sound communication research; and
8. uphold editorial independence, procedural fairness and the integrity of the scholarly record.

Scope

SIJMCMS considers manuscripts that make a substantive contribution within one or more of the following areas:

Journalism Studies and News Media

News production and consumption; newsroom cultures; reporting practices; investigative, data and solutions journalism; journalistic roles and values; media credibility and trust; press freedom; safety of journalists; media ownership; news diversity; local and community journalism; and changing business models for news.

Digital, Social and Emerging Media

Social-media platforms; online communities; platform governance; algorithms and artificial intelligence; mobile communication; digital cultures; creator and influencer economies; podcasting; streaming media; virtual and augmented reality; human-computer communication; datafication; digital divides; and emerging communication technologies.

Political Communication, Public Opinion and Democracy

Election communication; campaigns; political advertising; propaganda; public opinion; media effects; civic participation; deliberation; media systems; disinformation and misinformation; fact-checking; polarisation; populism; political rhetoric; government communication; and communication in conflict and peacebuilding.

Strategic, Corporate and Organisational Communication

Public relations; advertising; branding; marketing communication; corporate communication; organisational discourse; reputation and crisis communication; stakeholder engagement; internal communication; corporate social responsibility; advocacy; and communication strategy and evaluation.

Development, Health, Environmental and Risk Communication

Communication for development and social change; health campaigns; science communication; agricultural and rural communication; environmental and climate communication; disaster and emergency communication; risk perception; humanitarian communication; behaviour-change communication; indigenous knowledge; and participatory communication.

Broadcasting, Film, Popular Culture and Creative Industries

Radio, television and cinema; documentary and visual communication; screen and sound studies; entertainment media; music and popular culture; celebrity; sports communication; media aesthetics; creative labour; cultural industries; production studies; representation; and audience reception.

Media, Culture, Identity and Society

Gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, disability, age and sexuality in media; language and multilingual communication; migration and diaspora; youth cultures; memory; identity formation; media rituals; fandom; everyday media use; decolonial and postcolonial media studies; and communication across cultures.

Media Law, Ethics, Policy and Political Economy

Freedom of expression; privacy and data protection; intellectual property; media regulation; communication rights; professional ethics; ownership and concentration; labour and precarity; telecommunications policy; public-service media; internet governance; surveillance; access to information; and the political economy of communication.

Communication Theory, Methods and Education

Communication and media theory; research design; audience measurement; surveys and experiments; content, framing, narrative and discourse analysis; ethnography and interviews; historical and archival research; computational and network methods; visual methods; media literacy; journalism and communication education; and innovations in research ethics, data and measurement.

Submissions that are mainly descriptive, lack a clear theoretical, empirical or professional contribution, use methods that do not support their claims, or fall outside the journal’s remit may be declined without external review.

Article Types

*Word limits normally include notes but exclude the abstract, references, tables, figures and online supplementary material. Editors may approve exceptions where justified.

Why Publish with SIJMCMS?

• International and interdisciplinary readership.
• Double-anonymised peer review by subject specialists.
• Open access to the version of record immediately upon publication.
• Transparent editorial, ethics and post-publication policies.
• Particular visibility for robust scholarship from Africa and other underrepresented research settings.
• Persistent article identification and long-term digital preservation.

Journal at a Glance

Author Guidelines

General Requirements

Submissions must be original, within scope, written in clear English and not under consideration by another journal. Manuscripts should present a defined problem, an explicit contribution, an appropriate research design, transparent analysis and conclusions proportionate to the evidence. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted text, images, audio, video, screenshots, advertisements or other media material.

Submission Files

Authors should provide:

• a title page containing the article title, author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs where available, corresponding-author details, acknowledgements, funding, competing interests and author-contribution statement;
• an anonymised manuscript without identifying information;
• editable tables and publication-quality figure files;
• supplementary files, instruments, protocols, data, code or media appendices where relevant;
• ethics approval and consent information where applicable; and
• a cover letter explaining the manuscript’s fit and contribution and confirming compliance with journal policies.

Manuscript Structure

Original Research Articles should normally include:

1. concise and informative title;
2. structured abstract of 200-300 words covering background or purpose, methods, results and conclusion;
3. four to seven keywords;
4. introduction establishing the problem, gap, contribution and research objective;
5. literature review and theoretical or conceptual framework;
6. methodology, including research design, setting or media context, population or corpus, sampling, variables or coding framework, instruments, data-collection procedure, ethics and analytical strategy;
7. results, including relevant reliability, validity, diagnostic, sensitivity and robustness analyses;
8. discussion that interprets findings in relation to previous evidence and the relevant communication, cultural, institutional, technological or policy context;
9. conclusion stating the contribution, implications, limitations and priorities for future research;
10. required declarations; and
11. references and any supplementary data, instruments, code or media materials.

Alternative structures are acceptable for qualitative, historical, theoretical, critical, legal and practice-based scholarship when they fit disciplinary conventions and sustain a clear argument.

Style and Presentation

• Use British English consistently, except in quotations and official titles.
• Prepare text in an editable Word-compatible format, with continuous page and line numbering.
• Define abbreviations at first use and use them sparingly.
• Report dates, currencies, units, statistical symbols and decimal places consistently.
• Italicise titles and foreign expressions only where required by APA style and disciplinary convention.
• Identify media outlets, platforms, programmes, datasets, archives, campaigns, content samples and study locations precisely.
• Explain translation, transcription, coding, anonymisation and intercoder procedures where relevant.
• State the software and version used for empirical, qualitative or computational analysis where relevant.
• Report coefficients, uncertainty measures, sample sizes, effect sizes and exact probability values wherever appropriate.
• Identify tables, figures and multimedia materials in numerical order and cite each in the text.
• Provide informative titles, notes, sources, captions, transcripts and accessible descriptions where needed.
• Avoid unnecessary duplication, rhetorical overstatement and claims of causality unsupported by the research design.
• Use inclusive, respectful and non-stigmatising language.

Referencing

SIJMCMS uses APA Style, 7th edition. Authors must ensure that every in-text citation appears in the reference list and every listed reference is cited. Include DOIs as https://doi.org/… links where available. Audio-visual, social-media, web, archival and dataset sources must be cited with sufficient detail for identification and retrieval. References must be accurate and should prioritise original sources. Fabricated, irrelevant or citation-manipulated references constitute misconduct.

Required Declarations for Published Articles

Every article should carry the following headings, using “Not applicable” or “None declared” where appropriate:

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Author contributions
• Acknowledgements
• Data availability
• Materials and code availability
• Preregistration or protocol registration
• Use of artificial intelligence tools

Submission Checklist

Before submitting, the corresponding author should confirm that:

1. the manuscript is original, within scope and not under consideration elsewhere;
2. all authors qualify for authorship, approved the manuscript and agreed to submission;
3. the review manuscript is anonymised and the title page is separate;
4. the abstract, keywords, main text, references, tables, figures and declarations are complete;
5. methods, ethics, consent and reporting-guideline requirements have been addressed;
6. data, code and materials are deposited or restrictions are explained in a Data Availability Statement;
7. funding, competing interests, related works, preprints and AI use are disclosed;
8. every citation and reference has been checked for accuracy and relevance;
9. permission has been obtained for third-party copyrighted material; and
10. all files are readable, editable where required and free of identifying metadata in the anonymised version.