Herman Wasserman is Professor of Media Studies in the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He holds a doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and worked as a journalist before starting an academic career. He has published widely on media in post-apartheid South Africa. His books include the monographs The Ethics of Engagement: Media, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020); Media, Geopolitics, and Power (University of Illinois Press, 2018), Tabloid Journalism in South Africa (Indiana University Press, 2010) and several edited collections . He is editor-in-chief of the journals the Annals of the International Communication Association and African Journalism Studies and sits on the editorial board of several other scholarly journals. Wasserman holds a B1 rating from the South African National Research Foundation and is a Fellow of the International Communication Association.
Herman Wasserman has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, the Humboldt Foundation's Georg Foster Research Prize, the Stals Prize from the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns and the International Neva Award for Journalism Theory from St Petersburg State University. He is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and an elected member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa.