3. Methodology of the study 3.1 Conceptual approach: Media in a reconfigured political economy and the impact of COVID-19 F ROM the late 1990s and through the 2000s, Zimbabwe has experienced a severe “reconfiguration of its political economy” and, subsequently, its state-society relations [1]. The reconfiguration of this political economy can be traced to the fast track land reform programme (FTLRP), beginning in the year 2000. It heightened a deindustrialisation process that began after adopting the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme in the 1990s. This led to a shift in the economy’s structure: From a largely formal, agriculture-based economy to a largely informal one. The new economic structure has been characterised by widespread informality, precarity and deepening urban poverty. This saw the dislocation of old media structures and their replacement by new ones modelled around the newly emergent political economy. New media structures emerged and subsequently shaped the types of information that citizens seek and how they seek, which underwrite media needs and consumption habits. The industrial worker was replaced by the sole trader, vendor, cross-border trader, self-employed mechanic or carpenter, etc. The informal economy has become the main source of livelihood, but, at the same time, inadvertently created new media needs and consumption habits. For example, where the formal industrial worker of old relied heavily on the formal print newspaper and naturally deferred to the main state broadcaster as their sources of news, the vendor of today now relies on a new and wide array of information sources — from internet-based online newspapers accessed via mobile phone, to extra-terrestrial (freeto-air) satellite television to user-generated content shared via the WhatsApp messaging application. The effect of the reconfigured political economy has resulted in the emergence of new geographic typologies, which, by and large, define the dominant modes of livelihoods and their inhabitants. The rural area has seen the emergence of four distinct typologies — communal, resettlement, growth points and business centres, and commercial farming or mining areas. The urban areas have seen the prominence of four distinct subareas — low-density, mediumdensity, high-density, and periurban (including urban slum) areas. For instance, in the post-2000 resettlement/FTLRP areas, mostly politically regimented, “word of mouth” from state functionaries and local leaders has become the main source of information on access to livelihood and social services issues. Also, entertainment and other social news can be accessed at local business centres on public television, usually in “bars” or via a thin layer of “rural elites” with access to either a smartphone or a television accessing satellite television. Changing livelihood spaces and patterns, in conformity to new geographic typologies, have meant that the audiences, too, have radically changed. These new social groups have assumed different relations with the state, with a changed form of state-society relations. The contemporary nature of the state and its confluence with these emerging social groups have also tilted the media consumption habits of these new media audiences. Thus, how communities source information and consume it has also changed. The media content that matters has also changed depending on the audience involved. For example, during an earlier study by MISA in 2020, many rural traders who rely on buying and selling noted that the first thing they look for every morning is the rate of the local currency to the United States dollar — this allows them to peg the prices of their different wares for the day. 3