Journalism without signature: News and rumor from South Sudan

Abstract

In the years that immediately followed the independence of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011, the domestic media landscape was rife with repression. This article centers the practice of journalism without signature as one significant element of the vigilant position towards governance that South Sudanese journalists have taken up in the aftermath of political independence. The author traces how South Sudanese journalists have navigated postwar and post-independence intensities while balancing the portrayal of a nation-state building itself from the ground. The goal of this article is, therefore, to take their methodology seriously as journalism without signature or critical writing that emanates from the unnamed and deterritorialized journalists maintaining a critical position towards governance even as they empathize with the challenges the new government has faced in the postwar and post-independence context.