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- Volume 12, Issue 1, 2020
Journal of African Media Studies - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 12, Issue 1, 2020
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A case of double standards? Audience attitudes to professional norms on local and English language radio news programmes in Ghana
Authors: Audrey Gadzekpo, Abena Animwaa Yeboah-Banin and Sarah Akrofi-QuarcooAbstractThe proliferation of radio stations across Africa has engendered an increase in local language radio stations and fuelled culturally-rooted practices of news delivery considered by many media professionals as sub-standard. This article explores the reception practices of multi-lingual audiences in Ghana, focusing on their views on the different norms and approaches of local language and English language radio newscasts. Using data from a convenience sample of 1000 radio listeners in five Ghanaian cosmopolitan cities the study finds that audiences prefer more performative modes of news delivery on their local language stations. It was also evident that radio audiences are discerning and make distinctions between what is acceptable on local language versus English language radio. These results call for a reconsideration of western-influenced standards of news delivery and the development of professional standards more accommodating of the inflections of culture.
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China colonizing Africa narrative on social media: An issue activation and response perspective
More LessAbstractThe issue of ‘China colonizing Africa’ received significant attention in both traditional and social media in the periods before, during and after the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) 2018 meeting. This study traces these discourses on YouTube, which is one of the social media platforms widely used to raise awareness and also influence public opinion on various issues. Thematic and content analysis are used to identify the dominant themes discussed in the selected videos and also to identify the sentiments expressed by viewers in the comments posted. The issue activation and response model is used to create meaning from the data. The study finds that the themes and the sentiments reflect the dominance of pessimistic and optimistic perspectives on the Africa–China relationship. Furthermore, the study shows that the themes discussed have not offered new perspectives but instead the discussions have repackaged old narratives as part of agenda building efforts by the protagonists. The study, therefore argues that social media have become important platforms for activation of issues on the Africa–China relationship, hence the persistence of these old narratives is attributed to lack of effective responses to issues on social media by both African countries and Chinese officials.
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The portrayal of victims of intimate femicide in the South African media
By Amanda SpiesAbstractThis article reflects on the murders of Reeva Steenkamp (2013), Jayde Panayiotou (2015), Susan Rhode (2016) and Karabo Mokoena (2017) and questions how victims of intimate femicide are portrayed in the South African media. Media reporting on intimate femicide clearly illustrates how the murder of women by their intimate partners, are framed as isolated incidents rather than a systemic problem situated within a social context of male dominance. It is therefore increasingly important to understand how the media portrays victimhood and violence. This article explores how the murder of women by their partners are rarely classified as femicide, and how the media’s portrayal of these murders fails to convey the systemic nature of violence against women that also entrenches racial and class-based oppression by seemingly valuing some lives more than others. The focus is on the power of the media to obscure the nature of intimate partner violence, which entrenches a notion of ideal victimhood. In conclusion, the South African government’s response to this form of violence is explored, and the need for responsible reporting is called for in reporting on cases of intimate femicide.
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So, who is responsible? A framing analysis of newspaper coverage of electoral violence in Zimbabwe
More LessAbstractThis study examines how the 2008 election violence was framed in three mainstream Zimbabwean weekly newspapers – The Sunday Mail, The Independent and The Zimbabwean. It was noted that four frames – the victim, justice and human rights, trivialization and attribution of responsibility frames dominated the coverage of electoral violence in these three newspapers. The dominance of the trivializing frame in The Sunday Mail privileged the ruling party’s (Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front; ZANU PF) interpretation of electoral violence as inconsequential to the electoral process. Simultaneously, the prevalence of the victim, justice and human rights frames in The Independent and The Zimbabwean newspapers signifies the private media’s obsession with ZANU PF’s alleged electoral malpractices and situates these alleged transgressions within a broad global social justice and human rights trajectory to cultivate the West’s sympathy with the ‘victimised’ opposition.
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Reppin’ the nation, reppin’ themselves: Nation branding and personal branding in Kenya’s music video industry
By Brian EkdaleAbstractThis article explores the entanglement of nation branding and personal branding in the Kenyan music video industry. Although self-commodification and labouring on behalf of the nation are both indicative of neo-liberal governmentality, Kenyan music video directors build personal brands to wrestle creative control from their clients during the production process and they invoke their experiences representing Kenya abroad to elevate their professional status at home. Thus, branding in the Kenyan music video industry illustrates the complexities and contradictions of neo-liberal governmentality in global cultural production.
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The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai, Eddah M. Mutua, Alberto Gonzalez and Anke Wolbert (eds) (2018)
More LessAbstractLanham: Lexington Books, 221 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-49857-112-8, h/bk, $83.07
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