About my research
My research program is centred around incorporating comparative perspectives to the study of global political communication in the Global South. I work across three interconnected areas: State-sponsored news and their impact on public opinion, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Spanish-speaking South America; the connections between new forms of mis- and disinformation and public opinion towards global powers such as China; and the use of computational methods to assess how both State-sponsored news and disinformation shape the news agenda of African digital media.
In earlier work, I explored the intersections of politics, news media, and popular culture in East Asian countries (China, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula), examining media system evolution, the global circulation of popular culture, and the role of new information technologies in news distribution. My doctoral research took a multi-method approach to studying the presence of Chinese media in Kenya and South Africa.
Research areas
State-sponsored media
Disinformation & misinformation
Global political communication
Sub-Saharan Africa
Chinese media abroad
Computational text analysis
Foreign public opinion
Information integrity
Media systems
East Asian media
Popular culture & politics
Geopolitics of LLMs
Publications
2026Madrid-Morales, D., Wasserman, H., Davies-Laubscher, N., & Sow, F. How civil society coalition-building affects information integrity during elections: Evidence from four African countries.
Information, Communication & Society. [Advanced Online Publication]
2026Davies-Laubscher, N.,
Madrid-Morales, D., & Wasserman, H. 'Too aggressive' or 'slay queens': Gendered attacks, threats and disinformation in Kenyan elections.
The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs,
11(115), 44–57.
2025Wright, K.,
Madrid-Morales, D., & Barrie, C. Beyond "emergencies?" Reporting on humanitarian issues around the world.
Digital Journalism. [Advanced Online Publication]
2025Madrid-Morales, D., Tully, M., Mudavadi, K. C., Matanji, F., & Diop, L. Exploring audience agency in countering misinformation.
International Journal of Communication,
19, 2382–2406.
2025Gondwe, G.,
Madrid-Morales, D., Tully, M., & Wasserman, H. Misinformation and digital inequalities: Comparing how different demographic groups get exposed to and engage with false information.
Mass Communication and Society,
29(1), 1–15.
All publications →
Conference activity
2026ECCMadrid-Morales, D., Wasserman, H., Davies-Laubscher, N., & Sow, F. "How civil-society coalition-building affects information integrity during elections: Evidence from four African countries."
Communication and Democratic Resilience: Perspectives and Pathways (ECREA 2026 Pre-Conference), Brno, Czech Republic.
2026ECCYablokov, I.,
Madrid-Morales, D., & Atalay, A. "Russo-Chinese Narrative Alignment in International Broadcasting: The Case of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine."
11th European Communication Conference (ECC), Brno, Czech Republic.
2026ICAMadrid-Morales, D., et al. "Russo-Chinese Narrative Alignment in International Broadcasting: The Case of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine."
International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, Cape Town, South Africa.
2026ICAMadrid-Morales, D. "Disrupting or Conforming: Comparing African and non-African News Coverage of African Countries on YouTube."
ICA Pre-Conference: African and Global Media Representations of Africa, Cape Town, South Africa.
2025ICAMadrid-Morales, D. "Comparing the credibility, trustworthiness and perceived biases of China's international broadcasting amongst African audiences."
International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, Denver, USA.
2025ICAMadrid-Morales, D. "Navigating political disinformation on WhatsApp: Young adults' engagement strategies in South Africa."
International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, Denver, USA.
2025ICAMadrid-Morales, D. "Studying disinformation and information integrity in the Global South: When 'problems' are not always a 'problem'."
International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, Denver, USA.
2025ICAMadrid-Morales, D., & Hernandez, M. "Latin American countries in global media: A comparative longitudinal analysis of Spanish-language international broadcasting."
Media and Communication in Global Latinidades ICA Pre-Conference [Virtual].
2024ECCMadrid-Morales, D. "News about Africa on YouTube: A comparison of Chinese and non-Chinese media."
10th European Communication Conference (ECC), Ljubljana, Slovenia.
All conference activity →
Projects
Current
Examining how disinformation is encountered and navigated in everyday life in Armenia. Co-I: Ilya Yablokov.
Ongoing
Funded by: ISRF
Investigating the alignment of Russian and Chinese strategic narratives in global media and their reception in target audiences. Co-I: Ilya Yablokov.
Ongoing
Funded by: ESRC Network+
Completed
Building the first multilingual monitor corpus of digital news published online in Africa, combining computational methods with comparative media analysis.
Completed
Examining how disinformation spreads during election periods across four African countries and the role of civil society in countering it.
Completed
Funded by: OSF
Audience study examining how Chinese media presence shapes public opinion in Kenya and South Africa. With Herman Wasserman.
Completed
Intervention study on misinformation correction in Kenya and Senegal, co-led with Melissa Tully (Villanova University).
Completed