ECREA16-Abstract

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Friday, November 11

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IIC01

Africa and International Media

S. Franks

City University London, London, United Kingdom

This panel celebrates and is derived from the coincidence of two prominent 2016 publications concerning Africa and Media: the special issue of Communi‑

cation, Culture & Critique (9/1) entitled Africa, Media and Globalization, published in March (edited by Leslie Steeves), and the forthcoming publication, in

June, of Africa's Media Image in the 21

Century: From the ‘Heart of Darkness’to ‘Africa Rising’edited by Melanie Bunce, Suzanne Franks, and Chris Paterson

and published by Routledge. Together, these give new prominence to questions of how Africa is, and should be, portrayed, and offer a wide range of nu‑

anced new analyses of the role of international media and cultural institutions in creating much of what the world knows as “Africa”. As Steeves noted in

her special issue introduction, while “Western interests and colonial ties no longer predominantly determine Africa's paths toward global integration….

China's emergence as an economic superpower and its enormous and escalating investment in Africa, alongside new and longstanding trade with, for

instance, Japan, India, and the Middle East, and the rise of radical Islam and Christian fundamentalism in several nations, must be included in analyses

of Africa and globalization,”while she further observed that“Media representations help sustain Africa's subordination via globalization…Analyses – and

casual observation – of Africa's image in Western media indicate that Africa has received far less attention than other global regions (Hawk, 1992). When

present, representations frequently are critiqued for erasing via homogenization, that is, neglecting context in favor of familiar, usually negative tropes and

images – of disease, dysfunction, conflict, and poverty” (Steeves, 2016). The papers in these panels collective address these concerns with new empirical

research and contemporary analysis. Earlier versions of some of this work appeared in the special issue and in the new anthology. The anthology is the first

book in over twenty years to examine the international media's coverage of Sub-Saharan Africa, and is named in tribute to the original Africa’s Media Image

(1992), edited by Beverly Hawk and cited by Steeves, above. This panel examines factors that have transformed the global media system and its description

of Africa, changing whose perspectives are told and the forms of media that empower new voices. It is the intention of the panel to work toward moving

academic discussion beyond traditional critiques of journalistic stereotyping, Afro-pessimism, and 'darkest Africa' news coverage. Papers on the panel

examine news reporting on Africa by Belgian television (Joye), the nature of foreign correspondents in Africa (Vincente), the changing nature of reporting

of Africa (Bunce), the role of international broadcasting (Frere and Fiedler), and the international image of modern imperialism in Africa (Paterson). Africa’s

Media Image in the Twenty-First Century co-editor Professor Suzanne Franks will act as discussant. Citations: Hawk, B. (Ed.), Africa's media imageWestport,

CT: Praeger Steeves, H. L. (2016), Cartographies of Communication and Critique: Forging a Dialogue on Africa, Media, and Globalization. Communication,

Culture & Critique, 9: 1

PN 178

Bringing Africa Home. Reflections on Discursive Practices of Domestication in International News Reporting on Africa by Belgian

Television

S. Joye

University of Gent, School of Communication, Gent, Belgium

Previous studies (Joye & Biltereyst 2007; Joye 2010) have shown that Africa largely remains a ‘dark continent’ for Belgian news media in terms of devoted

attention, alongside findings that indicate a stereotypical representation. However, there are a few notable exceptions to this persistently dominant way

of reporting on Africa, being the news coverage of Congo, Ruanda and Burundi. As former Belgian colonies, they receive more screen time in comparison

to other African countries. Taking this as our starting point, the study addresses the issue of how news media can attribute a sense of relevance and prox‑

imity to events occurring in Africa by focusing on the journalistic practice of domestication (Clausen 2004). According to Gurevitch, Levy and Roeh (1991),

domesticating foreign events makes them comprehensible, appealing and more relevant to domestic audiences. Applying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

and following a case-based methodology, we investigate how the two main Belgian television stations (the public broadcasterVRT and commercial channel

VTM) have domesticated African current affairs in 2013 by explicitly linking them to Belgium. Our empirical focus lies on domesticated news items that echo

a particular kind of enforced proximity (cf. the concept of cosmopolitanism as defined by Hannerz (1996) andTomlinson (1999)) but also hint at Silverstone’s

(2007) notion of proper distance which refers to a particular politics of the representation of otherness and our mediated relationship to the (African) other.

This paper explores dominant discursive modes of domestication and scrutinizes the potential of the practice to foster feelings of cosmopolitanism and

identification that reframe the traditional critiques of Afro-pessimism by also exploring possible reiterations of known discourses of orientalism and global

inequality in the discursive practices of news production.

PN 179

Foreign Correspondents in Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Socio-Demographics and Professional Culture

P.N. Vicente

New University of Lisbon, Communication, Lisbon, Portugal

A sizable portion of our everyday knowledge about Sub-Saharan Africa comes from the work of international news reporters stationed in the continent.

Even though these news actors play a critical role in the communication of the distant Other, frequently criticized for its representational deficits, scholar

empirical research on the work of foreign correspondents has been considerably neglected: it is now decades old, it lacks a systematic examination of the on

the ground realities of journalism in Africa and of the evolving work of professionals, Pro-Ams and citizen media organizations supported by networked

digital media. This chapter is about the socio-demographics, the professional cultures and the newswork of these individuals. It inspects long-term tra‑

jectories in international journalism combined with short-term developments based on transformations on microelectronics and digitization. Three main

lines of inquiry are outlined: who is actually reporting across the continent, what are the main characteristics of the occupational cultures in place and

the impending constraints over newsworkers’ production routines. We assess how professional international news reporters are repositioning themselves

in a transforming communicative environment, and how they interpret their own occupation and the role of rising actors in the transnational mediasphere.

International and Intercultural

Communication

(IIC01–IIC06)