Dani Madrid-Morales
Assistant Professor, University of Houston

Trained as a broadcast journalist and ‘Asianist’. Currently working in academia. I am an Assistant Professor of Journalism the the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston. Previously, I spent four years at City University of Hong Kong as a Ph.D Fellow. Before entering academia, I worked for ten years as a scriptwriter and editor at Televisió de Catalunya, and I taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Universitat Popmpeu Fabra (UPF) and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

My academic interests reside at the nexus of media studies, international politics and popular culture, encompassing topics such as international communication, global media, Japanese visual culture and media representations. Geographically, I focus on mediated communication in East Asia, where I lived for several years, and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is at the centre of most of my current research. Methodologically, I employ a diverse array of methods, from interviews and online experiments to computational text analysis and focus groups.

Most recent updates:

× 4 October 2019: Presented some preliminary findings of a multi-country study on dis- and mis-information sharing in Sub-Saharan Africa at the Comparative Approaches to Disinformation Workshop at Harvard University. The slides are available here.

× 10 August 2019: The paper "An Exploratory Study of “Fake News” and Media Trust in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa" that I co-authored with Herman Wasserman is out in African Journalism Studies. The paper is available on the publisher's website.

× 10 November 2018: Earlier this month, I attended the second edition of ICA's African regional conference in Accra, Ghana. The slides for the two papers I presented there are now available in the Research section of the website.

× 18 October 2018: My research with Herman Wasserman about Chinese media in Kenya and South Africa is featured in this week's edition of The Economist in an article titled "Soft power and censorship". The online version is accessible through a (porous) paywall.

× 16 October 2018: I co-wrote an opinion piece, with Herman Wasserman, on the limits of Chinese interference in the African media landscape for the Asia Dialogue blog, curated by the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute.

× 1 October 2018: I sat down with student reporters at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication to chat about my new position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. Read the interview if you want to know... how I get inspired every morning.

× 19 September 2018: I provided commentary on the ongoing situation in the Korean Peninsula for RT (in Spanish), and on the trade war that President Donald Trump has initiated against China for HispanTV (Spanish).

× 3 September 2018: The newsmap R package, a semi-supervised model for geographical document classification, to which I contributed is now available on CRAN.

× 15 May 2018: The International Journal of Communication published my latest collaboration with Herman Wasserman on the impact of Chinese media on future media professionals in Kenya and South Africa. The article is available open access from the journal's website.

× 14 May 2018: Afrika Heute, a German website dedicated to Africa-related news has published a German translation of my Africa is a Country piece. Follow this link for the German version.

× 28 April 2018: I wrote a short piece on the expansion of StarTimes across Africa for Africa is a Country. The original piece can be found here and I published an extended version on my blog.

× 10 March 2018: A new article written with Lauren Gorfinkel on the documentary series Faces of Africa has been published in the Journal of African and Asian Studies. A pre-print version is available here.

Other updates:

× 26 February 2018: The Conversation published an op-ed I wrote on the controversy over the offensive skit about Africa-China relations that CCTV included in this year's Spring Gala Festival. The article is here.

× 15 December 2017: We presented the book Comunicación y poder en Asia orientla in Barcelona and Madrid. Check the media coverage or listen to the presentation (in Catalan) here.

× 29 September 2017: I talked about Japan's upcoming elections on Radio France Internationale Espagnol (in Spanish). Listen to my contribution here.

× 6 September 2017: I shared my views on the 2017 BRICS Summit on a live interview for RT (in Spanish). The full interview is here.

× 26 August 2017: I appeared on the "China in Africa podcast" to discuss StarTimes operations in Africa. Listen to the full podcast here.

× 20 August 2017: A new blog entry about some of the teaching innovations that were presented at AEJMC 2017 is available. You can read the new post here.

× 10 August 2017: I was recently quoted in a Los Angeles Times report on China's StarTimes operations in Kenya. Read the article by Jonathan Kaiman here.

× 29 July 2017: A new open access journal article based on my fieldwork at CGTN Africa, in Spanish, has been published in Communication Papers. Download a copy here.

× 29 May 2017: The slides from my two ICA 2017 presentations are now online. Download them here.

× 19 May 2017: Earlier this year I was awarded the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Innovation Award for Research Degree students. I was invited to give a talk about my experience. Watch the talk here.

× 6 May 2017: New blog post on Chinese media's struggle with finding an audience in Africa. Read it here.

× 1 May 2017: My new edited book Comunicación y poder en Asia oriental published by Editorial UOC is (finally) out. Get a copy from here.

× 21 August 2017: Live interviews on RT and HispanTV in which I analyze the situation in the Korean Peninsula and the conflicting narratives in North Korea and the US (in Spanish) Watch the interviews here.

× 20 April 2017: Live interview on RT (in Spanish) on the political situation in the Korean Peninsula. Watch it here.

× 15 April 2017: New blog post discussing my online crisis simulation project for COM5403 at City University of Hong Kong. Read it here or have a look at the simulation here.

× 6 April 2017: Commentary for RT (in Spanish) on the first meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Watch it here.

× 10 March 2017: Course materials for my class "Crisis Communication and Management" at City University of Hong Kong uploaded. Browse them here.

× 13 February 2017: Commentary for RT on Trump's Asia policy and the US-Japan alliance. Watch it here.

× 25 January 2017: New blog entry (in Spanish) on recent changes in North Korean media system. Read it here.

× 31 December 2016: New blog post on the rebranding of CCTV into CGTN. Read it here.

× 26 November 2016: New paper accepted in Journalism Studies with Herman Wasserman. Read the latest draft.

× 20 November 2016: Uploaded materials for the course "Video Production" that I taught at City University of Hong kong. See them here.

Dani Madrid-Morales Assistant Professor, University of Houston

Dani Madrid-Morales
Assistant Professor, University of Houston