Herman Wasserman

Wasserman is currently Professor of Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, where he served as Director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies from 2015 to 2020. He had previously held positions at Rhodes University, the University of Sheffield and the University of Newcastle in the UK.

He is an alumnus of Stellenbosch University, where he obtained the degrees BA (1992), BA (Hons) (1993), Hons B Journ (1995), MA (1997) and DLitt (2000). He also previously taught in the Department of Journalism, as Rykie van Reenen Fellow and later Associate Professor from 2002 to 2007. Before starting his academic career, he worked as a journalist for Media24.

Wasserman’s work has received wide international acclaim. He is a Fellow and Board Member of the International Communication Association, former section head of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, and an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Other awards include a Fulbright fellowship, the Georg Foster Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and the Neva Prize from St Petersburg State University. Locally, he has been awarded the Stals Prize for Communication Science and Journalism from the 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 Communication Theory and International Communication Gazette, and sits on the editorial board of several other journals.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of Houston, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität Munich and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Wasserman’s research centres around issues of media, democracy and society, and as member of international research teams, his work has been funded by amongst others the International Development Research Center (Canada), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the European Union, the British Academy, the Academy of Finland, the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the South African National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a widely published scholar, with 16 books (monographs and edited volumes), 86 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 55 book chapters to his name.

His current work focuses on media and disinformation, and he has worked with organisations such as The World Health Organization, UNESCO, Digital Public Square and Africacheck on issues such as the Covid-19 “infodemic”, media freedom and development, media literacy in schools, and online disinformation. He recently led a major international study on Information Disorder in the Global South, supported by the Canadian International Development Research Center, and his co-edited book, Disinformation in the Global South was published by Wiley-Blackwell earlier this year.