We welcome Dr. Kodwo Jonas Anson Boateng to GjC. He is the latest addition to our network, and as head of a journalism division in Ghana also the first from that part of Africa. Dr. Boateng has his higher education from Finland.
In his own words:
I am Kodwo Jonas Anson Boateng (PhD), currently the Head of Department of the Integrated Social Sciences and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Integrated Social Sciences of the Ghana Institute of Journalism in Accra. My principal area of interest is journalism and gender.
I graduated from the Communication Department of the University of Helsinki in Finland with a Msc in Communication and a first degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies from the same University. I did my post-graduate degree in Vocational Teacher Education from the Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences in Jyväskylä, Finland. I just completed my PhD studies from the Department of Languages and Communication Studies from the University of Jyväskylä. I have also practiced extensively as a television news journalists with Ghana’s major public broadcasting service.
I am currently co-teaching New Media course to third year and second year Public Relations and Journalism major students. We are already beginning studies into the digital divide and digital inequality and their implications on teaching and learning in communication studies. Our aim is to understand the level at which the exigences and challenges of socio-economic backgrounds (gender, educational background, urban-rural divide etc.) may either enhance or hamper access to digital devices and have implications for learning or teaching. Our second study focuses on gauging the depth of adoption and use of Twitter, Blogs, and other micro-blogs in journalism by Ghanaian journalists.