Promoting Research Uptake: New media versus traditional media is a recently published DFID paper from the IPS Africa Changing Lives: Making Research Real Forum held in Johannesburg, South Africa, 21 – 22 February 2011.

The forum brought together regional research organisations, advocacy groups, reporters and research communicators and sought to review and develop research communication best practices to support research uptake. The DIFD-funded Changing Lives: Making Research Real programme aims to raise the profile of research in the media in Africa and Asia.

This paper finds that although traditional media houses are losing circulation numbers and advertising revenue internationally, this trend is not followed in Africa where circulation numbers of newspapers increased by 13% in the past five years.  The paper also explores the use of new media, access to the internet and the understanding of online research communication tools. Due to their high penetration in Africa, cell phones could be a valuable tool for information sharing by government and developmental organisations on the continent.