Munachim Amah
What is Munachim's Story?
Munachim Amah is a doctoral candidate at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His research explores journalism's role in social change, with a focus on news narratives, media representations, poverty, and social justice. He examines how media portray people experiencing poverty and how journalistic practices and values evolve in precarious media environments.
Amah’s work has appeared in Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, Journalism, African Journalism Studies, Journalism and Media, and Critical Arts. He has served as Managing Editor of the Journal of Communication Inquiry (2024–2025) and has received top research awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).
Before moving to the United States for graduate studies in 2021, he worked as a freelance digital journalist and college instructor in Nigeria.
Recent Publications:
Young, R., Amah, M., Hinnant, A., & Len-Ríos, M. E. (2026). Care-based practices in health news: Why and how U.S. health journalists include exemplars in their reporting. Journalism Studies, 0(0), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2026.2615716
Amah, M., & Young, R. (2025). When ordinary citizens “shame the government” in the news: Nigerian journalists’ exemplification practices while covering poverty. Journalism, 0(0), 1-20. https://doi:10.1177/14648849251383749
Amah, M., & Young, R. (2025). De-Westernizing media and communication theory in practice: Toward a more inclusive theory for explaining exemplification phenomena. Journalism and Media, 6(2), 90. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia6020090
Amah, M. (2024). Covering the distant other: Discursive construction of the Makoko community in Nigeria as “Venice of Africa”. Journalism Practice, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2024.2334963
Amah, M. (2024). Locating the “human” in digital and communication technologies. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 49(1), 3-5. https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599241293559 (Original work published 2025)
Amah, M. (2024). Journalistic storytelling for social justice: A CDA of global news coverage of the Otodo Gbame forced evictions in Nigeria. African Journalism Studies, 45(1), 17-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2024.2346849
