Journal of African Media Studies - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012

After years of heated controversy over philosophical orientations among communication researchers, a consensus seems to have emerged that recognizes the value of both the American and Europeans traditions. It was in the wake of the ‘ferment’ debates among communication scholars in the late 1970s and early 1980s that African communication scholars also started to take stock of their field and take a closer look at their historical and cultural experiences. In trying to situate their own unique perspectives within the study of communication, these scholars lamented the paucity of authentic African theoretical perspectives.

All human communication behaviour is grounded in culture. Hence, authentic African communication theories attempt to explain such behaviour from the African cultural context. Over the years, however, African communication researchers engaged more in ‘reactive scholarship’ than in original theory building and relied largely on Eurocentric theories to explain African realities. Our study seeks to assess what progress has been made towards theory building among African communication scholars, and to determine whether such efforts still remain largely ‘reactive’, consist-ing mainly of criticisms of Eurocentric models and theories.

The data revealed that after 30 years of debate on the ferment in communication research, there is still a gaping hole in African communication research, one that is devoid of authentic African communication theories that reflect the cultural, linguis-tic and social cleavages of the African society.

Many different educational and training sessions focusing on science journalism have been offered to journalists in Africa in the past decades. However, there is still insufficient quality reporting on health, environment, technology and science. We propose a new, flexible and needs-oriented concept for the professionalization of journalists. Its main elements are peer-to-peer mentoring and building of professional associations using online tools for training, networking and journalistic research, a combination of approaches and an in situ delivery. It has been put into practice through the Science Journalism Cooperation (SjCOOP) project in Africa and in the Middle East.

The purpose of the study was to investigate patterns of major local and non-local news suppliers operating across a range of media – broadcast and print – and relationships between Libyan undergraduate students’ consumption of different news media platforms. A survey was administered to a sample of 400 students at Al-Fateh University using a stratified random sampling approach with sampling strata set by demographic groups. The new TV news services played an important role in attracting young Libyans with information they desire. The spread of new news media sources (TV, radio and print) in Libya has created a new type of news product that transcends national boundaries. The findings indicated that there were distinct news consumption-related population sub-groups defined in part by news platform (TV versus radio versus print) and in part by type of news supplier (local versus international TV news operations). These findings indicated the emergence of new niche markets in news in Libya.

The emergence of community radio in Ghana’s media sphere has changed the political economy of communications in Ghana. The participatory platform of the medium has led to citizens’ empowerment and facilitated the political, economic and social development of this new democracy. Marginalized communities are now able to question policies. The views expressed during these participatory programmes like live phone-in have helped to promote accountability and transparency within government circles and the corporate world. However, concerns have been raised over the serious allegations and mischievous remarks made on community radio stations and how they can be regulated. This article shall argue that the complex and intricate nature of the regulatory mechanism and the conceptualization of community radio have made it difficult for the regulatory body, National Media Commission (NMC) to regulate the community radio. Seeing that Ghana is a multi-ethnic state, her democracy may be endangered if the content from community radio stations which could heat up the polity is not regulated.

This article places ethnic radio stations in South Africa within the discourse of sociologies of voice and language using Munghana Lonene FM (ML FM) as a case study. Unlike most traditional researches that usually focus on audience studies, this research was informed by a situated qualitative trajectory in which radio presenters and the radio station staff were interviewed. These respondents were chosen due to their dual roles, first as members of the Tsonga community and thus seen by the community as their voice and representatives; and second, as professional policy implementers who have a public duty to serve a public broadcaster. Radio broadcasting as a mass medium possesses the advantage of exploiting the sound, which uses voice and language to construct cultural symbols and phanerons that create meanings. As the technology of mass communication radio continues to create a form of social intrigue in most rural communities. This article will argue that the conversational approach used by ML FM of mxing music and talk in Tsonga encourages the creation of a sociological natal affiliation; a form of ‘we’ feeling that translates into notions of ownership and belonging and empowerment. By re-establishing ML FM the post-apartheid leadership created a case for residual and incremental policy models. As a residual policy model, ML FM stands as the inherited radio broadcasting structure of the apartheid system, whereas social transformation processes and human agency including the formulation and implementation of new policies marks a point of departure as an incremental policy model. Local content usage in programming and music for the Tsonga as an ethnic group projects ML FM as the voice of the Tsonga people. Through different programmes, social meanings, symbols, world-views and life-worlds are created. As part of the radical transforma¬tion of SABC and as a decentralised public broadcaster ML FM can be seen as the conduit for the eschatologies of liberation and social transformation.

From 2005 to 2007 the French overseas department and Indian Ocean island of Réunion experienced for the first time ever an epidemic of chikungunya. Chikungunya is a vector-spread disease by mosquitoes that leads to painful rheumatic symptoms, and infected approximately one-third of the island’s population of approximately 802,000 inhabitants.

This article is based upon a discourse analysis of text and images of 111 articles on chikungunya in Réunion’s two main newspapers. During the epidemic the Réunionese printed press functioned as a provider of information, and an instigator of political polemics. The newspapers’ criticism responded to ‘orientalist’ representations of chikungunya within national press – and officialdom, but also reflected local perceptions of neglect and abandonment by the French nation state. While taking issue with other studies of press coverage of the outbreak, however, I argue that the polemics illustrate historical Réunionese geopolitical identifications with France, instead of postcolonial opposition.

This article discusses how ordinary Zimbabweans use jokes and mobile phones to construct their counter-publics. Jokes are an important part of the oral public sphere and have been used as outlets for political expectoration, to navigate and subvert state power and media censorship. Most of the jokes are often transmitted through mobile phones, which have become part of African social and cultural life. In view of restrictive media laws and an exclusive and dominant public sphere since the year 2000, jokes and mobile telephony have been used by some Zimbabweans to articulate their political views and to express dissatisfaction with the deteriorating economic and political situation in the country. In addition, the income status barrier to mobile phone ownership has been reduced tremendously, giving the mobile phone the potential to bridge the digital divide between rich and poor, urban and rural.

SAND STORM: LIBYA IN THE TIME OF REVO LUTION, LINDSEY HILSUM (2012) London: Faber and Faber, 304 pp., ISBN 978571288038, h/bk, £17

STARRING MANDELA AND COSBY: MEDIA AND THE END(S) OF APARTHEID, RON KRABILL (2010) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 200 pp., ISBN: 9780226451886, h/bk, $60.00, ISBN: 9780226451893, p/bk, $21.00

A ILHA DOS ESPÍRITOS/THE ISLAND OF THE SPIRITS, LICÍNIO AZEVEDO (2010) Mozambique: Ébano Multimedia

This article is a critical review of the documentary film A ilha dos espíritos/The Island of the Spirits (2010), by the Brazilian-Mozambican film-maker Licínio Azevedo.