Investigating the popularity of the Zimbabwean tabloid newspaper uMthunywa: a reception study of Bulawayo readers

While the tabloid press in Africa has often been criticized for undermining the normative functions of journalism and depoliticizing readers, there has been little attempt to theorize the reasons for its rapid growth in popularity. Drawing on qualitative research methods, principally qualitative content analysis and indepth interviews, with Bulawayo readers of the Zimbabwean vernacular (isiNdebele) tabloid newspaper uMthunywa, this article argues that such media can serve an important journalistic and cultural role. In particular, as this article will demonstrate, they can provide politically and economically marginalized readers with an alternative public space or sphere in which to articulate issues pertinent to their lived social, political, and economic realities