COVID-19 is the most mediated pandemic in history thus far. COVID-19 humour, much of it circulated online, is a global phenomenon, but it takes different forms in different settings. This Special Issue brings together articles that add to our understanding of how Africans have experienced corona pandemic conditions, as well as contributing to the scholarship on media in African contexts, while focusing on humour. I suggest that we understand humorous responses to the COVID-19 crisis as discourses on contemporary conditions, and a means of highlighting the ongoing crises that precede the pandemic and contribute to the impact of the virus. In that sense, humour can be quite serious.
{"title":"Deadly serious: Pandemic humour, media and critical perspectives","authors":"V. Bernal","doi":"10.1386/jams_00072_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00072_2","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 is the most mediated pandemic in history thus far. COVID-19 humour, much of it circulated online, is a global phenomenon, but it takes different forms in different settings. This Special Issue brings together articles that add to our understanding of how Africans have experienced\u0000 corona pandemic conditions, as well as contributing to the scholarship on media in African contexts, while focusing on humour. I suggest that we understand humorous responses to the COVID-19 crisis as discourses on contemporary conditions, and a means of highlighting the ongoing crises that\u0000 precede the pandemic and contribute to the impact of the virus. In that sense, humour can be quite serious.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85633036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article draws upon research exploring a project that combines edutainment and participatory communication strategies as an approach to social change in Malawi. Throughout the research, I take a critical stance that seeks to uplift voices of an audience attending a radio listening club (RLC) and therefore utilize participatory methods to co-create the body of knowledge with study participants. In this article, I query RLC audience’s thoughts of the project’s relevance and influence in their daily lives. Oriented by Hall’s concepts of encoding and decoding, I analyse my data focusing on the dynamics between the objectives of the producers and the lived reality of the participants. Findings reveal that audience’s motivation for continued attendance of the RLC is different to that intended in the encoding process; rather audiences negotiate the relevance of messages to their own needs, those of their children and utilize the space to extend their social capital.
{"title":"Radio edutainment and participatory communication for social change: A case of lived reality among a rural Malawian audience","authors":"Mtisunge Isabel Kamlongera","doi":"10.1386/jams_00080_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00080_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws upon research exploring a project that combines edutainment and participatory communication strategies as an approach to social change in Malawi. Throughout the research, I take a critical stance that seeks to uplift voices of an audience attending a radio listening\u0000 club (RLC) and therefore utilize participatory methods to co-create the body of knowledge with study participants. In this article, I query RLC audience’s thoughts of the project’s relevance and influence in their daily lives. Oriented by Hall’s concepts of encoding and decoding,\u0000 I analyse my data focusing on the dynamics between the objectives of the producers and the lived reality of the participants. Findings reveal that audience’s motivation for continued attendance of the RLC is different to that intended in the encoding process; rather audiences negotiate\u0000 the relevance of messages to their own needs, those of their children and utilize the space to extend their social capital.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84498758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines theatre as a creative journalistic media deployed by theatre practitioners to map experiences of Zimbabweans during the COVID-19-induced lockdown. When the first positive case of COVID-19 was reported in March 2020, the Zimbabwe government, like many other countries, responded by introducing restrictions for public gatherings and ultimately a lockdown including arts events. Yet, theatricality has refused to capitulate. Artists re-invented their theatre productions into theatrical comic and satirical works posted on various social media platforms, in an effort to make sense of the pandemic, bring laughter and address a serious complex situation. We examine how artists deployed theatre to journal, capture and document the citizen’s collective experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, for both the present and posterity. We are specifically interested in analysing the different ways art is deployed to provide entertainment, a broader understanding and awareness of the social, psychological and economic impact of COVID-19 for the present and future generations.
{"title":"Theatricality in the midst of a pandemic: An assessment of artistic responses to COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe","authors":"Nkululeko Sibanda, C. Moyo","doi":"10.1386/jams_00079_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00079_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines theatre as a creative journalistic media deployed by theatre practitioners to map experiences of Zimbabweans during the COVID-19-induced lockdown. When the first positive case of COVID-19 was reported in March 2020, the Zimbabwe government, like many other countries,\u0000 responded by introducing restrictions for public gatherings and ultimately a lockdown including arts events. Yet, theatricality has refused to capitulate. Artists re-invented their theatre productions into theatrical comic and satirical works posted on various social media platforms, in an\u0000 effort to make sense of the pandemic, bring laughter and address a serious complex situation. We examine how artists deployed theatre to journal, capture and document the citizen’s collective experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, for both the present and posterity. We are\u0000 specifically interested in analysing the different ways art is deployed to provide entertainment, a broader understanding and awareness of the social, psychological and economic impact of COVID-19 for the present and future generations.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87164355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Against many odds, the Hausa film industry alias Kannywood has come of age. The film industry survives several pressing challenges from within and outside Nigeria, perhaps more than its counterparts anywhere else. Although there is no denying that the quality of its output has significantly improved, its survival has little or nothing to do with that. Many critics, including the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN) leadership, call ‘bad’ films, are still being made. Romantic movies, laden with a typical and predictable pattern of the love triangle, song and dance sequences among other appropriated and plagiarized Bollywood modalities, remain the favourite of producers and arguably that of the audience. However, according to some surveys, such films lack merit in the realm of critical film discourse in Africa and beyond. This article is set out to discuss this issue through a content analysis of a recent film titled Sareena (Nuhu 2019). The movie, released in 2019, is a bloated, implausible melodrama and a direct mimicry of a famous Indian film, Kaabil (Gupta 2017).
{"title":"Hausa film industry and the ‘menace’ of appropriation of Indian romantic movies","authors":"M. Ibrahim","doi":"10.1386/jams_00081_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00081_1","url":null,"abstract":"Against many odds, the Hausa film industry alias Kannywood has come of age. The film industry survives several pressing challenges from within and outside Nigeria, perhaps more than its counterparts anywhere else. Although there is no denying that the quality of its output has significantly\u0000 improved, its survival has little or nothing to do with that. Many critics, including the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN) leadership, call ‘bad’ films, are still being made. Romantic movies, laden with a typical and predictable pattern of the love\u0000 triangle, song and dance sequences among other appropriated and plagiarized Bollywood modalities, remain the favourite of producers and arguably that of the audience. However, according to some surveys, such films lack merit in the realm of critical film discourse in Africa and beyond. This\u0000 article is set out to discuss this issue through a content analysis of a recent film titled Sareena (Nuhu 2019). The movie, released in 2019, is a bloated, implausible melodrama and a direct mimicry of a famous Indian film, Kaabil (Gupta 2017).","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76186479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social media played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic both as a tool for communicating COVID-19-related messages and as a platform for sharing lighter moments during the distressful time. My article focuses on these lighter moments in the form of internet memes. My interest is on internet memes shared by the cyber public in Malawi. I contend that besides the humour, the memes carry insightful commentary on and criticism of society’s reaction to and handling of the pandemic. The memes poke fun at petrified and distressed Malawians, at some politicians who took advantage of the pandemic to further their own interests and how the outbreak widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Some sinophobic memes accused China of infecting the world with virus. My methodological and theoretical approaches are based on netnographic studies and theories of humour (nature and function) respectively.
{"title":"Viral giggles: Internet memes and COVID-19 in Malawi","authors":"Emmanuel Mzomera Ngwira","doi":"10.1386/jams_00074_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00074_1","url":null,"abstract":"Social media played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic both as a tool for communicating COVID-19-related messages and as a platform for sharing lighter moments during the distressful time. My article focuses on these lighter moments in the form of internet memes. My interest\u0000 is on internet memes shared by the cyber public in Malawi. I contend that besides the humour, the memes carry insightful commentary on and criticism of society’s reaction to and handling of the pandemic. The memes poke fun at petrified and distressed Malawians, at some politicians who\u0000 took advantage of the pandemic to further their own interests and how the outbreak widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Some sinophobic memes accused China of infecting the world with virus. My methodological and theoretical approaches are based on netnographic studies and theories\u0000 of humour (nature and function) respectively.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79206388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Senegal is a country with a long history of oral tradition, where the griot is the leading figure responsible for the transmission of messages from generation to generation over centuries. They are highly regarded and considered in society as a mediator and advisor through their music or spoken word. As Senegal witnessed the arrival of the first cases of coronavirus, a large number of musicians used social media to disseminate songs raising coronavirus awareness. Following these first initiatives, President Macky Sall met with several acclaimed musicians in the country. This led to the production of a polyphonic song released by the social media platforms of the Ministry of Health and Social Action. This article looks at music as an ‘edutaining’ and phenomenologically proximate communication strategy to raise awareness about coronavirus and the measures that can be taken to prevent its spread.
{"title":"Use of Senegalese music to raise coronavirus awareness on social media","authors":"Estrella Sendra, Journal Rappé","doi":"10.1386/jams_00066_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00066_1","url":null,"abstract":"Senegal is a country with a long history of oral tradition, where the griot is the leading figure responsible for the transmission of messages from generation to generation over centuries. They are highly regarded and considered in society as a mediator and advisor through their music or spoken word. As Senegal witnessed the arrival of the first cases of coronavirus, a large number of musicians used social media to disseminate songs raising coronavirus awareness. Following these first initiatives, President Macky Sall met with several acclaimed musicians in the country. This led to the production of a polyphonic song released by the social media platforms of the Ministry of Health and Social Action. This article looks at music as an ‘edutaining’ and phenomenologically proximate communication strategy to raise awareness about coronavirus and the measures that can be taken to prevent its spread.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73584022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media and the coronavirus pandemic in Africa","authors":"Martin N. Ndlela","doi":"10.1386/jams_00061_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00061_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76017538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In addition to the devastating loss of lives, the harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to individuals and communities around the world has caused seismic disruptions in economic, social and interpersonal relationships. The pandemic has affected international diplomatic relations as well by amplifying existing geopolitical tensions. By situating discourses of Africa and Africans within global ferments of pandemic politics, this study interrogates how Africa and its peoples were invoked in global media. Drawing from postcolonial theory and conceptual propositions of Afrophobia, the study uses multimodal discourse analysis to critically examine news stories that engaged with two phenomena: controversies regarding the African director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. Findings indicate elements of Afrophobia were evident in the Trump Administration’s and US conservative media outlets’ engagement with WHO. Additionally, the study showed the mainstreaming of non-western Afrophobia through the example of the xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. It concludes by proposing a contextual, intersectional and critical geopolitical analytical optics for a more robust understanding of the global Black experience.
{"title":"Pandemic politics and Africa: Examining discourses of Afrophobia in the news media","authors":"Téwodros W. Workneh","doi":"10.1386/jams_00071_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00071_1","url":null,"abstract":"In addition to the devastating loss of lives, the harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to individuals and communities around the world has caused seismic disruptions in economic, social and interpersonal relationships. The pandemic has affected international diplomatic relations as well by amplifying existing geopolitical tensions. By situating discourses of Africa and Africans within global ferments of pandemic politics, this study interrogates how Africa and its peoples were invoked in global media. Drawing from postcolonial theory and conceptual propositions of Afrophobia, the study uses multimodal discourse analysis to critically examine news stories that engaged with two phenomena: controversies regarding the African director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. Findings indicate elements of Afrophobia were evident in the Trump Administration’s and US conservative media outlets’ engagement with WHO. Additionally, the study showed the mainstreaming of non-western Afrophobia through the example of the xenophobic treatment of Africans in China. It concludes by proposing a contextual, intersectional and critical geopolitical analytical optics for a more robust understanding of the global Black experience.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84987680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As part of its efforts to manage the pandemic, the government of Ghana has tried to control messaging via press conferences, only to find out that it has to contend with a preponderance of, sometimes conflicting, narratives from a variety of sources. These messages come from traditional and social media, adopting conventional and alternative formats for content and delivery. In this article, we examine the dialectical relationship between the government’s COVID-19 communication strategy and alternative messages from a select range of sources that have emerged. We evaluate the extent to which the latter messages reinforced or undermined official narratives; the relative trust that each set of messages is generating among citizens; the implications for effective management of the crisis; and steps that the state took to maintain/regain control as it sought to combat what it considered to be (dis)misinformation from some of these sources.
{"title":"COVID-19 narratives and counter-narratives in Ghana: The dialectics of state messaging and alternative re/de-constructions","authors":"Kwame Akuffo Anoff-Ntow, Wisdom J. Tettey","doi":"10.1386/jams_00069_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00069_1","url":null,"abstract":"As part of its efforts to manage the pandemic, the government of Ghana has tried to control messaging via press conferences, only to find out that it has to contend with a preponderance of, sometimes conflicting, narratives from a variety of sources. These messages come from traditional and social media, adopting conventional and alternative formats for content and delivery. In this article, we examine the dialectical relationship between the government’s COVID-19 communication strategy and alternative messages from a select range of sources that have emerged. We evaluate the extent to which the latter messages reinforced or undermined official narratives; the relative trust that each set of messages is generating among citizens; the implications for effective management of the crisis; and steps that the state took to maintain/regain control as it sought to combat what it considered to be (dis)misinformation from some of these sources.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82118953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Babatunde Raphael Ojebuyi, A. Mobolaji, R. Kolawole
Despite its prevalence among Nigerian online readers, the motives for, and implications of, online secondary gatekeeping – a practice where online media audiences select further fragments from published news, aggregate them and share with fellow social media users – have remained unexplored particularly as regards possible sharing of news about the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study examined the motives for online news sharing, the newsworthiness criteria applied by Nigerian social media users while selecting and sharing COVID-19-related news and implications of this practice for users’ general knowledge about the virus. Online survey with 349 social media users and five Focus Group Discussion sessions with purposively selected social media users provided data for the study. Findings show that 94.8 per cent of the respondents shared news items about confirmed cases (48.7 per cent) and recoveries (46.1 per cent), while only 5.2 per cent of the respondents shared information about COVID-19 fatalities. Apart from fact-checking stories to confirm their veracity, users applied various newsworthiness criteria such as intensity (25.2 per cent), proximity (14.0 per cent), consequence (12.3 per cent), bizarre (11.2 per cent) and personality (10.9 per cent). Findings further show that the respondents applied 44.076 times the messages they were exposed to through social media to protect themselves against COVID-19. Nigerian social media users are active online secondary gatekeepers, and exposure to COVID-19 stories through social media during the pandemic enhanced their general knowledge about the virus.
{"title":"Active news audience in COVID-19 pandemic season: Online news sharing motives and secondary gatekeeping decisions by social media users in Nigeria","authors":"Babatunde Raphael Ojebuyi, A. Mobolaji, R. Kolawole","doi":"10.1386/jams_00064_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00064_1","url":null,"abstract":"Despite its prevalence among Nigerian online readers, the motives for, and implications of, online secondary gatekeeping – a practice where online media audiences select further fragments from published news, aggregate them and share with fellow social media users – have remained unexplored particularly as regards possible sharing of news about the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study examined the motives for online news sharing, the newsworthiness criteria applied by Nigerian social media users while selecting and sharing COVID-19-related news and implications of this practice for users’ general knowledge about the virus. Online survey with 349 social media users and five Focus Group Discussion sessions with purposively selected social media users provided data for the study. Findings show that 94.8 per cent of the respondents shared news items about confirmed cases (48.7 per cent) and recoveries (46.1 per cent), while only 5.2 per cent of the respondents shared information about COVID-19 fatalities. Apart from fact-checking stories to confirm their veracity, users applied various newsworthiness criteria such as intensity (25.2 per cent), proximity (14.0 per cent), consequence (12.3 per cent), bizarre (11.2 per cent) and personality (10.9 per cent). Findings further show that the respondents applied 44.076 times the messages they were exposed to through social media to protect themselves against COVID-19. Nigerian social media users are active online secondary gatekeepers, and exposure to COVID-19 stories through social media during the pandemic enhanced their general knowledge about the virus.","PeriodicalId":43702,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Media Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80267373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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