Journal of African Media Studies - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2019

Studies of (new) media and social change should strive to introduce causality into the analysis. Studies relying on quantitative data tend to provide either too simplistic explanations or just point to correlations while qualitatively based studies tend to be so particularistic that the potential for generalizing findings from specific cases is negligible. In this article, it is argued that proper accounts should strive to suggest causal connections between social change and media practices – not by resorting to unrealistic cover law-explanations but by identifying and analysing social mechanisms. Done properly, such analyses would: heed acting subjects; explain these practices through expositions of the minute steps that link A and B; and be realistic accounts – both in the sense of being based on ‘thick’ descriptions and of being easily recognizable when compared to what is actually happening in everyday life.

Based on a multi-methodological fieldwork, conducted in Gaborone and a village in Botswana in 2015/16, this article discusses how new media is used as part of young people’s everyday practices and with what consequences. The findings show that Batswana attach high significance to personal media but use it more for social than direct income-generating activities, with little effect on their core life concerns. People’s uses of personal media have, however, significantly changed the practical processes around how concerns can be handled, and on their socio-economic consequences. The dynamics by which personal media uses indirectly generate new outcomes are discussed using four cases that exemplify variations within the most ardent new media user group in Botswana, the young adults in the capital. The analysis highlights how mobility, social capital and – not least – education are important and interlinked factors in the social mechanisms that produce different outcomes of media use.

This article, by partly adopting a historical perspective, examines the introduction of new media in a Kenyan rural village, Kapkoi, and how it changes the communication ecology in the village. Further it explores how people in Kapkoi use and ascribe meaning to media. The article argues that categories such as gender, age and financial situation influence people’s access to and use of media and demonstrates how media use can simultaneously reinforce and challenge power structures. Moreover, it highlights the clear digital divide between rural areas and urban centres, and yet suggests that the introduction of new media is partly owing to the connection between the urban and the rural and that media and communications technologies sustain and increase the connectedness of the local.

This article examines how ordinary people in rural and urban areas in Kenya ascribe meaning to their daily use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) including media in ever changing communication ecologies and how the use of new ICT interrelates with processes of sociocultural change in everyday life. Taking as point of departure a semi-ethnographic social constructivist approach based on observations and semi-structured life world interviews the study presents an exploratory analytical bricolage around themes like power, knowledge and gender. The findings identify a simultaneous and seamless integration of the different new media that lead to significant open-ended processes of sociocultural change characterized by complexities, ambiguities, continuities, ruptures and inertia rather than dramatic irreversible changes. These findings call for a new paradigm in media studies focusing on communication ecologies and everyday uses of ICT where continuity and inertia are more seriously taken into accounts in processes of sociocultural change.

Although invisibility has historically provided a degree of protection, Lesbian, Gay, Bi-, Trans-, Queer and Intersexuals need to materialize publicly as a group to successfully advocate for their rights. Decades of systematic exclusion of the community from traditional discourse-producing sites, such as media and physical spaces, could potentially render self-controlled digital spaces an attractive alternative for human rights advocacy and self-representation. The following article explores to what degree the Ugandan sexual minority community utilizes the microblogging platform Twitter’s inbuilt affordance of self-controlled visibility to counter and challenge pervasive homophobic discourses. Through a qualitative content analysis of a purposeful sample of tweets generated by the main sexual minority network (Sexual Minorities Uganda [SMUG]), during the latest general election, the study finds that the affordance of controlled visibility is not consistently exploited for disseminating alternative narratives to external audiences, but rather chooses to highlight the agency of SMUG and its network members.

Pan-Africanism, a concept that attempts to capture the essence of being an African, needs to be reconsidered in the age of social media. In this article, we examine how Twitter users negotiate the question of African identity through humorous hashtagdriven conversations. We specifically question whether a new kind of Pan-Africanism is emerging on Africa’s Twitterverse through the use of a popular hashtag in 2015, #IfAfricaWasABar. In our analysis of tweets linked to #IfAfricaWasABar, we conclude that Twitter provides temporary solidarity by engaging users in humorous exchanges regarding the sociocultural, political and economic issues that define the African continental condition today.