Media Culture And Conflict In Africa

This volume brings together a range of views and arguments that healthily contribute to global conversations on media, culture and conflict in Africa. It explores how cultural practices, media practices, social movements, and the possibilities of emerging technologies could be ventilated and directed towards remediating the perilous state of affairs in political, social, and economic spaces in contemporary Africa. As the intersection of culture and conflict is relatively underexplored or under-researched in African media studies, this book makes an important contribution to the field.

This book explores the role and place of popular, traditional and digital media platforms in the mediatization, representation and performance of various conflicts and peacebuilding interventions in the African context. The role of the media in conflict is often depicted as either ‘good’ (as symbolized by peace journalism) or ‘bad’ (as exemplified by war journalism), but this book moves beyond this binary to highlight the ‘in-between’ role that the media often plays in times of conflict. The volume does not only focus on the relationship between mass media, conflict and peacebuilding processes but it broadens its scope by critically analysing the dynamic and emergent roles of popular and digital media platforms in a continent where the semi-literate and oral communities still rely heavily on popular communication platforms to get news and information. Whilst social media platforms have been hailed for their assumed democratic and digital dividends, this book does not only focus on these positive aspects but also shines a light on dark forms of participation which are fuelling racial, gender, ethnic, political and religious conflicts in highly polarized and stratified societies. Highlighting the many ways in which traditional, digital and popular media can be used to both escalate conflicts and promote peacebuilding, this volume will be a useful resource for students, researchers and civil society groups interested in peace and conflict studies, journalism and media studies in different contexts within Africa.

African audiences and users are rapidly gaining in importance and increasingly targeted by global media companies, social media platforms and mobile phone operators. This is the first edited volume that addresses the everyday lived experiences of Africans in their interaction with different kinds of media: old and new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national, material and virtual. So far, the bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has studied media through the lens of media-state relations, thereby adopting liberal democracy as the normative ideal and examining the potential contribution of African media to development and democratization. Focusing instead on everyday media culture in a range of African countries, this volume contributes to the broader project of provincializing and decolonizing audience and internet studies.

What is the role of the media in Africa? How do they work? How do they interact with global media? How do they reflect and express local culture? Incorporating both African and international perspectives, Media and Identity in Africa demonstrates how media outlets are used to perpetuate, question, or modify the unequal power relations between Africa and the rest of the world. Discussions about the construction of old and new social entities which are defined by class, gender, ethnicity, political and economic differences, wealth, poverty, cultural behavior, language, and religion dominate these new assessments of communications media in Africa. This volume addresses the tensions between the global and the local that have inspired creative control and use of traditional and modern forms of media.

Communication in an Era of Global Conflicts assesses trends and issues in communication and their implications for conflicts in the African context. In doing so, the various chapters draw from culture, tradition, folklore, communication and conflict theories, principles and strategies, and from systems approach to conflict resolution. The underlying assumption of all the chapters is the pivotal role of communication--new media, traditional mass communication, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and communication technologies--in conflict and conflict resolution. This book is unique for its multidimensional perspectives, a long overdue addition to the growing literature on conflicts in Africa.

This handbook comprises fresh and incisive research focusing on African media, culture and communication. The chapters from a cross-section of scholars dissect the forces shaping the field within a changing African context. It adds critical corpora of African scholarship and theory that places the everyday worlds, needs and uses of Africans first. The book goes beyond critiques of the marginality of African approaches in media and communication studies to offer scholars the theoretical and empirical toolkit needed to start building critical corpora of African scholarship and theory that places the everyday worlds, needs and uses of Africans first. Decoloniality demands new epistemological interventions in African media, culture and communication, and this book is an important interlocutor in this space. In a globally interconnected world, changing patterns of authority and power pose new challenges to the ways in which media institutions are constituted and managed, as well as how communication and media policy is negotiated and the manner in which citizens engage with increasing media opportunities. The handbook focuses on the interrelationships of the local and the global and the concomitant consequences for media practice, education and citizen engagement in today’s Africa. Altogether, the book foregrounds convivial epistemologies relevant for locating African media and communication in the pluriverse. This handbook is an essential read for critical media, communications, cultural studies and journalism scholars.

In this book, Marie-Soleil Frère synthesises the interaction between the mass media and conflict in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Congo-Brazzaville, the Central African Republic, Chad, Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

What role should the media play in conflicts that arise during transitions to democracy? What makes the role of the media in Africa different from those in other parts of the world? What ethical responsibilities and obligations do the media have towards societies mired in conflict and characterized by social and economic inequality, ethnic and racial polarization and histories of oppression and violence? The Ethics of Engagement sets out to answer thesequestions by considering various examples of conflicts in African democracies and proposes an "ethics of listening" as a normative framework for the media.