Media Capture and Perspectives for Media Development in a Fragile Media System

Guinea­‑Bissau’s media have negotiated their roles and freedoms within the postcolonial national construct since its official independence from Portugal in 1974. While the current media landscape is relatively pluralistic, journalists experience constraints from various sides: political pressures, unaccommodating regulations, lack of resources. The concept of media capture (Mungiu­‑Pippidi Mabweazara et al., 2020; Schiffrin, 2021) allows the analysis of complex, subtle and structural constraints limiting media’s ability to fulfil their roles. This paper traces the phenomenon on the macro level (context), meso level (organizations) and micro level (journalists) in Guinea­‑Bissau to interrogate how the concept plays out in a context shaped by fragility. The article draws on a literature review, official documents and semi-structured interviews. Following Dugmore’s (2022) idea of precarity as an endogenous condition in many Sub­‑Saharan contexts, this paper argues that capture is engrained in a fragile system rather than being an exception or disruption.