Full Description
Africa's Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media's coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, especially by international news media. The book highlights factors that have transformed the global media system, changing whose perspectives are told and the forms of media that empower new voices.
Case studies consider questions such as: how has new media changed whose views are represented? Does Chinese or diaspora media offer alternative perspectives for viewing the continent? How do foreign correspondents interact with their audiences in a social media age? What is the contemporary role of charity groups and PR firms in shaping news content? They also examine how recent high profile events and issues been covered by the international media, from the Ebola crisis, and Boko Haram to debates surrounding the "Africa Rising" narrative and neo-imperialism.
The book makes a substantial contribution by moving the academic discussion beyond the traditional critiques of journalistic stereotyping, Afro-pessimism, and 'darkest Africa' news coverage. It explores the news outlets, international power dynamics, and technologies that shape and reshape the contemporary image of Africa and Africans in journalism and global culture.
Contents
Foreword
Beverly Hawk
Introduction: a new Africa's Media Image?
Mel Bunce, Suzanne Franks and Chris Paterson
PART I: Framing Africa
1. The international news coverage of Africa: beyond the "single story"
Mel Bunce
2. Media perspectives: in defence of Western journalists in Africa
Michela Wrong
3. Reporting and writing Africa in a world of unequal encounters
Francis B. Nyamnjoh
4. Media perspectives: how does Africa get reported? A letter of concern to 60 Minutes
Howard W. French
5. How not to write about writing about Africa
Martin Scott
6 Bringing Africa home. reflections on discursive practices of domestication in international news reporting on Africa by Belgian television
Stijn Joye
7. The image of Africa from the perspectives of the African diasporic press in the UK.
Olatunji Ogunyemi
PART II: The image makers
8. Mediating the distant Other for the distant audience: how do Western correspondents in East and Southern Africa perceive their audience?
Toussaint Nothias
9. Media perspectives: television reporting of Africa: 30 years on
Zeinab Badawi
10. Foreign correspondents in sub-Saharan Africa: their socio-demographics and professional culture
Paulo Nuno Vicente
11. Media perspectives: reflecting on my father's legacy in reporting Africa
Salim Amin
12. Media perspectives: we're missing the story: the media's retreat from foreign reporting
Anjan Sundaram
13. Instagram as a potential platform for alternative Visual Culture in South Africa
Danielle Becker
14. Media perspectives: social media and new narratives: Kenyans tweet back
H. Nanjala Nyabola
15. A "New Ghana" in "Rising Africa"?
Rachel Flamenbaum
PART III: Development and humanitarian stories
16. Media perspectives: is Africa's development story still stuck on aid?
Eliza Anyangwe
17. AIDS in Africa and the British media: shifting images of a pandemic
Ludek Stavinoha
18. Media perspectives: a means to an end? Creating a market for humanitarian news from Africa
Heba Aly
19. It was a "simple", "positive" story of African self-help (manufactured for a Kenyan NGO by advertising multinationals)
Kate Wright
20. Media perspectives: Africa for Norway: challenging stereotypes using humour
Nicklas Poulsen Viki
21. Bloggers, celebrities, and economists: news coverage of the Millennium Villages Project
Audrey Ariss, Anya Schiffrin and Michelle Chahine
PART IV: Politics in the representation of Africa
22. Africa through Chinese eyes: new frames or the same old lens? African news in English from China Central Television, compared with the BBC
Vivien Marsh
23. Media perspectives: new media and African engagement with the global public sphere
Sean Jacobs
24. Shifting power relations, shifting images
Herman Wasserman
25. Communicating violence: the media strategies of Boko Haram
Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar
26. Perceptions of Chinese media's Africa coverage
James Wan
27. New imperialisms, old stereotypes
Chris Paterson
28. Nollywood news: African screen media at the intersections of the global and the local
Noah Tsika
Index
