Dr Dani Madrid-Morales (he/him)

BA, MA (Autònoma Barcelona); MA (FU Berlin); PhD (CityU Hong Kong)

School of Information, Journalism and Communication

Lecturer in Journalism and Global Communication

Postgraduate Research Director

Portrait of Dani Madrid-Morales
Profile picture of Portrait of Dani Madrid-Morales
d.madrid-morales@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 2508
The Wave

Full contact details

Dr Dani Madrid-Morales
School of Information, Journalism and Communication
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
Profile

Dani joined the school in April 2022 as Lecturer in Journalism & Global Communication. Prior to joining The University of Sheffield, he was an Assistant Professor in Journalism at the Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston (2018-2022), and a Hong Kong PhD Fellow in the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong (2013-2018).

Before starting his academic career, Dani worked as a journalist for 15 years in his hometown, Barcelona. He first reported on sports for local radio stations and news websites, and then joined the newsroom of Televisió de Catalunya (TV3), where he worked as producer and news editor, covering foreign affairs.

Dani is an active member of the International Communication Association’s Global Communication and Social Change Division, where he served as Secretary from 2020 to 2022. He is also a member of the editorial board of the academic journal, African Journalism Studies and the Annals of the International Communication Association.

At the School of Journalism, Media and Communication, Dani also serves as Director of Postgraduate Research, and is the Co-Lead of the Disinformation Research Cluster.

Research interests

Dani's research is centred around the study of global political communication and international media flows, with a focus on the Global South. He has published extensively on the impact of global Chinese media on local journalistic cultures in English and French speaking Africa and studied the multiple ways audiences in East and Southern Africa engage with news and entertainment on Chinese media. His work on this area has been discussed in some of the world’s leading news organisations including BBC World Service, CNN International, The Economist, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Los Angeles Times.

More recently, Dani has been interested in studying the geopolitics of disinformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from an audience perspective. His latest book on this topic, co-edited with Herman Wasserman, is (Wiley). Dani also helps curate , a website that brings together research on mis/disinformation in Africa. In the area of disinformation studies, he is currently focusing on the different ways media users engage with disinformation online, and how disinformation produced by foreign actors influences public opinion in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In his research, Dani employs a wide range of methodological approaches. He is actively involved in exploring how the use of computational methods can help researchers gain insights from media texts, particularly in the Global South. As part of these efforts, Dani is working on the development of a live corpus of digital news that includes hundreds of media organizations in three dozen African countries. Researchers interested in using content from the database can explore this and contact Dani for more details.

Publications

Books

  • Madrid-Morales D, Martínez G, Ollé M & Mejía J (2017) Comunicación y poder en Asia oriental. Barcelona: Editorial UOC.

Edited books

  • Wasserman H & Madrid‐Morales D (Ed.) (2022) . Wiley.

Journal articles

  • Kobayashi T & Madrid-Morales D (2025) . Japanese Psychological Research.
  • Madrid-Morales D, Tully M, Mudavadi KC, Matanji F & Diop L (2025) Exploring audience agency in countering misinformation. International Journal of Communication, 19, 2382-2406.
  • Diop L, Madrid-Morales D, Matanji F, Mudavadi KC & Tully M (2025) . Journal of African Media Studies, 17(1), 55-72.
  • Wright K, Madrid-Morales D & Barrie C (2025) . Digital Journalism.
  • Mudavadi KC, Matanji F, Diop L, Tully M & Madrid-Morales D (2025) . Journalism, 26(7), 1488-1507.
  • Madrid-Morales D & Wasserman H (2024) . African Journalism Studies, 45(4), 327-345.
  • Matanji F, Tully M, Mudavadi KC, Diop L & Madrid-Morales D (2024) . African Journalism Studies.
  • Madrid-Morales D, Wasserman H & Ahmed S (2024) . International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 36(3).
  • Madrid-Morales D, Rodriguez‐Amat JR & Lindner P (2023) . Media and Communication, 11(3).
  • Marsh V, Madrid-Morales D & Paterson C (2023) . International Communication Gazette, 85(1), 3-14.
  • Kobayashi T & Madrid-Morales D (2022) . Revista Internacional de Sociología, 80(4).
  • Madrid-Morales D & Wasserman H (2022) . Online Media and Global Communication, 0(0).
  • Ahmed S, Madrid-Morales D & Tully M (2022) . Online Information Review.
  • Ahmed S, Madrid-Morales D & Tully M (2022) . Journal of Information Technology & Politics.
  • Tully M, Madrid-Morales D, Wasserman H, Gondwe G & Ireri K (2022) . Digital Journalism, 10(5), 679-697.
  • Madrid-Morales D (2021) . Global Media and China, 6(2), 129-151.
  • Kobayashi T, Miura A, Madrid-Morales D & Shimizu H (2021) . Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 52(4), 388-405.
  • Madrid-Morales D & Ireri K (2021) . Journal of African Media Studies, 13(1), 3-16.
  • Madrid-Morales D, Wasserman H, Gondwe G, Ndlovu K, Sikanku E, Tully M, Umejei E & Uzuegbunam C (2021) Motivations for sharing misinformation: a comparative study in six Sub-Saharan African countries. International Journal of Communication, 15(2021), 1200-1219.
  • Ahmed S & Madrid-Morales D (2021) . Information, Communication & Society, 24(3), 381-399.
  • Madrid-Morales D (2020) . African Journalism Studies, 41(4), 68-82.
  • Hernández M & Madrid-Morales D (2020) . Journalism Studies, 21(8), 1076-1092.
  • Kobayashi T, Madrid‐Morales D, Asaba Y & Tago A (2020) . Social Science Quarterly, 101(1), 309-324.
  • Wasserman H & Madrid-Morales D (2019) . African Journalism Studies, 40(1), 107-123.
  • Madrid-Morales D & Gorfinkel L (2018) . Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53(6), 917-931.
  • Wasserman H & Madrid-Morales D (2018) How Influential Are Chinese Media in Africa? An Audience Analysis in Kenya and South Africa. International Journal of Communication, 12, 2212-2231.
  • Madrid-Morales D & Wasserman H (2018) . Journalism Studies, 19(8), 1218-1235.
  • Madrid-Morales D (2017) . Communication Papers, 6(11), 51-69.
  • Madrid-Morales D (2016) . Asian Journal of Communication, 26(2), 197-199.
  • Madrid-Morales D & Lovric B (2015) . Journal of Fandom Studies, The, 3(1), 23-41.
  • Gondwe G, Madrid-Morales D, Tully M & Wasserman H () . Mass Communication and Society, 1-15.

Book chapters

  • Wasserman H & Madrid-Morales D (2025) Engaging and disengaging with political disinformation on WhatsApp: A study of young adults in South Africa In Udupa S & Wasserman H (Ed.), WhatsApp in the World: Disinformation, Encryption, and Extreme Speech (pp. 126-140). New York: NYU Press.
  • Mudavadi KC & Madrid-Morales D (2024) In Eldridge II SA, Cheruiyot D, Banjac S & Swart J (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (pp. 450-459). Routledge
  • Wasserman H & Madrid-Morales D (2024) In Yang G, Meng B & Yuan EJ (Ed.), Pandemic Crossings: Digital Technology, Everyday Experience, and Governance in the COVID-19 Crisis (pp. 189-212). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
  • Madrid-Morales D & Wasserman H (2023) The “rise of the rest” in global media and competition over news narratives in Africa In Carbone G & Ragazzi L (Ed.), Is Africa Turning Against the West? (pp. 93-112). Milan: Ledizioni.
  • Wasserman H & Madrid-Morales D (2022) In Maarek PJ (Ed.), Manufacturing Government Communication on Covid-19: A Comparative Perspective (pp. 319-333). Springer
  • Madrid‐Morales and D & Wasserman H (2022) (pp. 41-57). Wiley
  • Wasserman and H & Madrid‐Morales D (2022) (pp. 210-220). Wiley
  • Madrid-Morales D (2017) , Screening China's Soft Power (pp. 38-55). Routledge
  • Madrid-Morales D (2017) , China Africa Relations Building Images Through Cultural Cooperation Media Representation and Communication (pp. 129-146).
  • Madrid-Morales D (2016) , China’s Media and Soft Power in Africa (pp. 79-92). Palgrave Macmillan US
Teaching activities

Dani’s teaches modules in global journalism and global communication, research methods and data journalism.

He is module leader for JNL61005 Research Portfolio in the MA Global Journalism course, where he supervises student dissertations too, and for JNL6027 Journalism, Globalisation and Technology.

 

PhD Supervision

Dani is interested in supervising doctoral students in the following areas:

  • China-Africa media relations
  • Disinformation in Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Global public opinion
  • Audiences and global media flows
  • Computational approaches to the study news

Currently, Dani is supervising the following students:

  • Anran Ju, China's Digital Public Diplomacy towards UK and Turkey
  • Hongqin Cheng, Populism in Online Electoral Campaigning in Taiwan
  • Xiao Cheng, Audiences and Data Journalism in China
  • Wisnu P. Utomo, Digital Transformations and Hybridisation in Indonesian Journalism

PhD Study in journalism, media and communication