Herman Wasserman
Herman Wasserman is Professor of Journalism and Chair of the Department of Journalism and Director of the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He holds a doctorate in literature and a postgraduate degree in journalism and worked as a newspaper journalist before embarking on an academic career. He previously taught at the universities of Sheffield, Newcastle, Rhodes University and the University of Cape Town. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Munich, Indiana, Houston, Utrecht, Groningen and Tsinghua. He has published widely on journalism ethics, media, conflict and democracy and disinformation in Africa. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association, an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and an expert member of the International Panel on the Information Environment. His awards include a Fulbright fellowship, the Neva Prize for journalism theory from St Petersburg University, the Georg Foster Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Stals Prize from the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns. Wasserman is Editor-in-Chief of the academic journals African Journalism Studies and the Annals of the International Communication Association, Associate Editor of International Communication Gazette and sits on the editorial boards of several other international journals.
At the invitation of Prof Dr Sahana Udupa (Ethnology, LMU), he was a 2024-2025 Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and part of the CAS Research Group Below the Radar? Messaging Apps, Encryption and the Enticement of Extreme Speech.
Featured Work
Tabloid Journalism in South Africa (Indiana University Press)
Media, Geopolitics, and Power (University of Illinois Press)
Media, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Oxford University Press)
Disinformation in the Global South (Wiley-Blackwell)
Whatsapp in the World (New York University Press)
Media on the Margins (Palgrave, forthcoming)
The Handbook of Disinformation and the Media (Routledge, forthcoming)
