Introducing heteronationalistic metajournalism: Digital audiences and the contestation of transnational LGBTQIA+ journalism in East and Southern Africa

From a Carlsonian perspective, metajournalistic discourse encompasses all public conversations about journalism: how people (including academics) debate who counts as a journalist, what qualifies as news (newsworthiness/news values), and which journalistic/journalism-adjacent outlets should be trusted (or not). While metajournalistic discourse (MJD) scholarship in East, West, and Southern Africa is growing, I introduce heteronationalistic metajournalism to the field of journalism scholarship. Heteronationalistic metajournalism merges metajournalistic discourse theory with postcolonial queer theory to examine how digital news audiences contest the transnational legitimacy of Western news media in covering LGBTQIA + issues in Africa. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of audience comments on CNN’s YouTube interviews with Kenyan, Ugandan, and Zimbabwean presidents (2014–2018), I unpack how online publics deploy nationalist, religious, and moral discourses to contest perceived Western news media’s moral imperialism while reinforcing heteronormative and patriarchal notions of African sovereignty. In centering audience-driven discourse, I demonstrate how heteronationalistic metajournalism functions as a site of postcolonial negotiation, extending the study of journalistic legitimacy to include sexuality, nationhood, and transnational power in digital news spaces.