"As media ecosystems in West Africa are increasingly diversifying and opening up after decades of state control, innovative and independent journalism is advancing government transparency and accountability. New opportunities for funders are opening in tandem, with potential for both social and econ
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omic impact. This report explores several of these opportunities, surfaced through in-depth research on Nigeria and Ghana. While both countries lead the region in terms of both economic and media development, they operate under many of the same dynamics and constraints that exist across West Africa, and show how other markets may evolve, politically and commercially." (Executive summary)
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"The paper addresses the blurred understandings of what developing country mobile internet users feel they are paying for. The move towards increasing online news and music consumption around the world has resulted in low growth in paid content consumption and a digital advertising market that is no
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t highly favourable for news or entertainment providers. From a major study conducted on mobile phone based internet behaviours in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda in 2015, we find consumption in these countries reflects the trends observed in more mature markets where the decline in news purchase revenues and advertising rates raises fundamental questions about the business models of independent media. While users enjoy the personalized content benefits of the mobile web, they feel that paying for data (i.e. Mobile connection and data bytes) is sufficient and conflate it with paying for content (i.e. Content in an online newspaper or online music). We argue that deconstructing misunderstandings of paying for mobile internet access and paying for content (including ascertaining whether they are genuine misunderstandings) is important for understanding how to achieve a free and fair internet, where content is accessible but generates enough profit to be sustainable." (Abstract)
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"Social media as a new phenomenon has become a tool used by many televangelists and pastors all over the world. It is against this background that this research sought to explore the Facebook activities of some Ghanaian Pentecostal pastors from a missional perspective. The article deals with the con
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cept of social media, Facebook and its potential for mission purposes, the Facebook phenomenon among Ghanaians and how Ghanaian Pentecostal Pastors are using Facebook for missional purposes, as well as some of concerns on the negative uses of social media. The study revealed that Ghanaian pastors are followed by people from different religious and societal backgrounds. It has also offered the pastors and their congregations the opportunity to form relationships with a wide and diverse range of people without being bound by geographical space." (Abstract)
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"This paper argues that the safety of journalists in Ghana can no longer be taken for granted given the available evidence of physical attacks on journalists (Joint Statement NMC et al., 2016 and MFWA, 2016). The overarching objective of the study is to portray Donkor’s case as typical of similar
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cases in Ghana and beyond and highlight the implications of attacks on journalists. In the past decade or so, physical attacks on journalist have been the most prevalent form of violation against journalists in Ghana. In this essay, a single case study of Donkor is examined together with relevant documents as the tip of an iceberg to demonstrate and paint a picture of the harrowing and degrading experience of physical and other forms of attacks against journalists in Ghana and its implications for safeguarding press freedom and the fundamental human rights of people. The incidence of attacks against journalists and how such perpetrators often go unpunished, though not a phenomenon peculiar only to Ghana, needs serious interrogation given the latitude of freedom of the media guaranteed in the 1992 fourth republican Constitution of Ghana. It is pertinent to ask: how far have stakeholders contributed to the promotion of journalists’ safety as prescribed in UNESCO’s Safety of Journalists Document? While chronicling some instances of actions, which tend to endanger the lives of journalists in the line of duty, I would conclude that a concerted effort is required to enable journalists, the public, civil society organisations, international organisations and state institutions to initiate strategic actions aimed at tackling the problem." (Abstract)
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"L’approfondissement des pratiques démocratiques dans les pays étudiés passe non seulement par le renforcement des capacités des médias et des journalistes, pour qu’ils puissent s’emparer pleinement des outils numériques, mais aussi par la montée en puissance d’un grand nombre de nouv
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eaux acteurs citoyens qui ont déjà montré, notamment lors de rendezvous électoraux, le rôle positif qu’ils pouvaient jouer. Les enjeux liés à la qualité et à la diversité de l’information disponible dans ces pays, à la transparence de l’action publique et à la redevabilité des institutions, sont intimement liés à l’existence d’un écosystème structuré qui englobe des journalistes, des blogueurs, des développeurs informatiques, des représentants d’administrations publiques, des spécialistes des données ou de la cartographie, des membres d’OSC ou d’ONG, etc. Accompagner ces acteurs citoyens d’Afrique dans le développement d’un espace public ouvert, pluriel, participatif et bien informé constitue aujourd’hui un défi à plusieurs dimensions : Contribuer à l’amélioration de l’accès à l’information (et donc, à l’accès à l’internet); Sensibiliser aux enjeux de la société numérique et de la participation citoyenne; Soutenir les acteurs de l’information et de la donnée au service du débat public; Structurer des réseaux nationaux/internationaux et d’éco-systèmes locaux d’acteurs citoyens; Développer une culture de la donnée publique ouverte et des usages que l’on peut en faire." (Conclusion, page 38)
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"Organizations strive to persuade the public to change beliefs or behavior through expensive media campaigns. Designers painstakingly craft resonant and culturally sensitive messaging that will motivate people to buy a product or take active steps to improve their health. But once these campaigns le
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ave the controlled environments of focus groups and advertising agencies, the public interprets and distorts the campaigns in ways their designers never intended or dreamed. In 'Best Laid Plans', Terence E. McDonnell argues that these well-designed campaigns are undergoing “cultural entropy”: the process through which the intended meanings and uses of cultural objects fracture into alternative meanings, new practices, failed interactions, and blatant disregard. Using AIDS media campaigns in Accra, Ghana, as its central case study, the book walks readers through best-practice, evidence-based media campaigns that fall totally flat. Female condoms are turned into bracelets, AIDS posters become home decorations, red ribbons fade into pink under the sun—to name a few failures. These damaging cultural misfires are not random. Rather, McDonnell makes the case that these disruptions are patterned, widespread, and inevitable—indicative of a broader process of cultural entropy." (Back cover)
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"Now in paperback for the first time, the Handbook is an academic adaptation of information contained in the Global Report on the Status of Women in News Media, a study commissioned by the International Women's Media Foundation. The book's editor was the principal investigator of the original study.
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This text draws together the most robust data from that original study, presenting it in 29 chapters on individual nations and three additional theoretical chapters. The book is the most expansive effort to date to consider women's standing in the journalism profession across the world. Contents organize nations in relation to their progress within newsrooms, with those most advanced in gender equality representing diversity in terms of region and national development. Contributing authors are, in most cases, the original researchers for their respective nations in the Global Report study." (Publisher description)
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"This book deals with the often-neglected link between indigenous languages, media and democracy in Africa. It recognizes that the media plays an amplifying role that is vital to modern-day expression, public participation and democracy but that without the agency to harness media potential, many Af
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ricans will be excluded from public discourse." (Publisher description)
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"The rapid development of the information society has accentuated the importance of digital divides, which refer to economic and social inequalities among populations due to differences in access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication technologies (ICT). This book discusses the cu
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rrent state of digital divides, ranging from global." (Publisher description)
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"Christiaan scrutinizes existing concepts of cultural and creative industries, as applied in public policies in African countries and largely inluenced by programmes of intergovernmental development agencies. He then searches for empirical evidence of their true value for human development. He looks
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into the role of the music industries in Ghana and Burkina Faso in particular and in doing so is able to draw conclusions on the potential and deicits in the existing development approaches for these areas. He considers the cultural industries as a source for diversity that goes beyond the economic debate on growth, and looks into possibilities to build more organic relations between existing concepts, policies and practices. This research will undoubtedly advance cultural policy thinking and debate in Europe on three levels: it gives an insight into the way a European debate resonates and has a meaning in a global perspective; it advances the empirical understanding of the cultural industries in West Africa and; it challenges the extent to which European action can and should inform progress of the cultural industries elsewhere." (Foreword, page 10)
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"Mass media play an important role in explaining the issue of female genital cutting and can influence discourse among the general public as well as policy makers. Understanding how news media present female genital cutting has strong implications for the global status of women. This study, a quanti
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tative content analysis, analyzed how 15 years of newspaper coverage surrounding the launch of the Millennium Development Goals framed female genital cutting in four countries with varying prevalence levels of female genital cutting: the United States, Ghana, The Gambia, and Kenya. The study found female genital cutting is consistently portrayed as a problematic and thematic topic, largely tied to cultural rituals. However, coverage is minimal and inconsistent over time, and does not appear to be impacted by the increase in international initiatives aimed at combatting the practice." (Abstract)
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"In today's Africa racism and ethnicity have been implicated in serious conflicts - from Egypt to Mali to South Africa - that have cost lives and undermined efforts to achieve national cohesion and meaningful development. Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa sets about rethinking the role of me
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dia and communication in perpetuating, reinforcing and reining in racism, absolute ethnicity and other discriminations across Africa. It goes beyond the customary discussion of media racism and ethnic stereotyping to critically address broader issues of identity, belonging and exclusion. Topics covered include racism in South African newspapers, pluralist media debates in Kenya, media discourses on same-sex relations in Uganda and ethnicised news coverage in Nigerian newspapers." (Publisher description)
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"[...] Specifically, we argue that development programs with an eye on instrumental outcomes are well-served by the cultivation of an understanding of broader digital practices—of people’s increasingly digital lives. This work explores not only what devices people use, but also how they get onli
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ne and what they do once there. These representations of digital practices must be fluid and current, given the rapidly changing landscape of Internet connectivity and digital services, and must identify opportunities for new inclusive business models and behavioral interventions. Therefore, this report contributes to the evidence base for development practice and for theory in several ways.
Chapter One offers a sketch of Caribou Digital’s three-part overarching approach to understanding emerging digital practices in context, with an eye specifically on bridging the gaps between development and daily life, and between the micro-level perspective of individual users and the macro-level forces impacting the landscape of digital resources available to them. Chapter Two details results from extensive interviews with experts in the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) that help place the current M4D wave in the context of more durable past and future factors. In Chapter Three, our reports on new primary research with users in Uganda, Ghana, and Kenya yield a broader and up-to-the-minute story of how mobile technologies are currently the center of users’ digital lives. Chapter Four concludes the report with a synthesis of these two streams, suggesting that our portrayal of users’ “Digital Days” can provide a user-centric lens to understand how technologies and practices are intertwined, how they vary between contexts, and how they might enable and structure development interventions." (Executive summary)
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"Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensational Movies examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture in turmoil. Birgit Meyer captures the dynamic process of popular filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination
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and tracks its interlacing of technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious elements. Filling the void left by the defunct state film industry, video movies negotiate the imaginaries deployed by state cinema on the one hand and Christianity on the other. Exploring the format of "film as revelation"—and the debt these films owe to religious notions of divination and revelation—Meyer elucidates the affinity between cinematic and popular Christian modes of looking and demonstrates the transgressive potential that haunts images of the occult." (Back cover)
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"Partisan media are often blamed for polarization in newly liberalized regimes. However, there is little empirical work on the subject, and information-processing theories suggest that extreme position taking is only one possible response to opinionated news. Rather, we theorize that partisan media
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may cause moderation in postliberalization settings, because low political sophistication and shifting political landscapes discourage partisan-motivated reasoning. We conducted a field experiment in Ghana in which tro-tros (commuter minibuses) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Passengers heard live talk-radio from a progovernment, pro-opposition, or neutral station, or were in a no-radio control. We find no effect of like-minded media on polarization, but significant evidence of moderation from cross-cutting broadcasts, indicating that rival arguments persuaded subjects. Partisan broadcasts also encouraged displays of national over partisan identity. Rather than fueling extremism, we argue that partisan media can moderate by exposing citizens to alternate perspectives." (Abstract)
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"New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa casts a critical look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. Following political liberalization, media deregulation, and the proliferation of new media technologies, many African religious leaders and activists have appropriated such me
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dia to strengthen and expand their communities and gain public recognition. Media have also been used to marginalize and restrict the activities of other groups, which has sometimes led to tension, conflict, and even violence. Showing how media are rarely neutral vehicles of expression, the contributors to this multidisciplinary volume analyze the mutual imbrications of media and religion during times of rapid technological and social change in various places throughout Africa." (Publisher description)
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"Ethnographische Methoden haben heute in alle kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen Eingang gefunden. Auch in der Medienforschung spielen sie eine zentrale Rolle. Dieses Handbuch trägt die Methodendiskussion in der Medienethnologie zusammen und entwickelt sie am Beispiel konkreter Feldfo
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rschungsberichte weiter: Die dichte Beschreibung von Medienpraktiken, eine kritische Verortung der Subjektivität im Feld und der Fokus auch auf die Methoden der Beforschten sind zentrale Elemente der Beiträge." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Over five years Facebook has grown from practically no users in Sub-Saharan Africa to become the most widely used social media platform. In the four countries where face-to-face surveys were carried out for this research, between 14% (Tanzania) and 27% (Ghana) of all respondents were using it [...]
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Over the last five years, the number of Africans who own or have access to mobile phones, computers, laptops, smartphones and tablets has grown considerably. These both act as media carriers (a mobile with a radio or TV receiver) or a media in their own right (a mobile accessing the Internet and Social Media). African newspapers face the same dilemma as many developed country newspapers. Their print version generates almost all of their revenues but increasingly their online users are either close to or above their print readership." (Page 8)
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