When a South Africa-based colleague told me she usually recommends Eurocentric books for her media methods module, I soon realised there was an existing knowledge gap that needed to be addressed. As we sat at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference in Leicester in 2016, my colleague narrated her failure to find sound empirical work on media and communication research in Africa. Not that the area had not been covered by other academics, she insisted, but her options were very limited. My initial thought was to put together a fifteen-chapter collection seeking to address past, present and future research trends in media and communication studies, but buoyed by the intensifying interest from leading scholars in the discipline I decided with the support of the publisher to compile this twenty-six-chapter collection as the first Palgrave Handbook of Media and Communication Research in Africa.
This collection therefore seeks to examine the current state of media and communication research in Africa, exploring not just new trends and developments but also historicising long-held theoretical assumptions in order to determine their relevance in the twenty-first century. It also provides empirically grounded expert analysis of the disciplineās future, scrutinising threats and opportunities along with the impending challenges facing future media and communication theorists. Departing from past studies in the field and cognisant of the fact that some collections have sought to explore media and communication studies across the continent through the lens of just two or three case studies from a few African countries, only to face justifiable criticism, research presented here is drawn from each region of the continent with chapters drawn from anglophone, francophone and lusophone Africa. The results presented here therefore challenge the commonly held belief and assumption that Africa is a country in and of itself, given the different experiences of the sampled African countries. In a departure from the past, I advocate research that presents Africa as a key contributor to knowledge production. The research collected here seeks to challenge the wrong-footed beliefs and notions that indicate Africa can only be used as a experimental base for Eurocentric theories. Evidence that African knowledge is equally important is highlighted.
Communication and media research is undergoing much change the world over. The arrival of new technologies has changed the way in which people interact and share content, and it has also, in various ways, empowered them to gather, produce, disseminate and share information, discarding over-reliance on traditional sources and forms of communications. Africa as a continent is also bracing itself for the introduction and dispensation of these technologies. Social media and other digital platforms are considered to be a powerful platform that can be used by pro-democracy activists to negotiate and sometimes push for reform-based political and social changes. There is a need, therefore, for all of us to pause for a second and ask ourselves when we conduct research online what exactly we are doing. Are we doing it right? What can we improve, and how? Moreover, are Western knowledge bases and research techniques superior to those of Africa? With several media and communication scholars engaged in research that seeks to question, for example, whether digital activists and citizen journalists are the new change instigators, and if so whether we ought to revisit our methodologies, engage and critique the techniques used in other regions of the world so as to advance knowledge. All this will be important for future researchers in the field. We also need to ask ourselves, what is knowledge?
Recent studies exploring the impact of technology in African societies are abundant (Bosch, 2016a, 2016b; de Bruijn, 2016; Mutsvairo, 2016; Petersen & Johnston, 2015; Rodny-Gumede, 2015; Willems & Mano, 2016). However, still missing or perhaps infrequently undertaken are empirical investigations that delve specifically into how media and communications research in Africa has evolved over the years. What exactly is media research in the twenty-first century? What does it involve? What techniques are used? Is there a universal conceptualisation of research in communication studies, or does Africa as a region have or demand a completely different approach to the way in which research is conducted? What challenges are faced by researchers seeking to explore the discipline in Africa? What are the emerging issues in media and communication research on the continent? These and several other questions are at the heart of this collection. If technology is changing the way in which Africans interact, how is it changing the way in which research is conducted across the continent? What exactly is technology? Indigenous technologies are also part and parcel of this circle of innovation, presumably. Participatory research methods such as online ethnography are being used to investigate the impact of technology in Africa (see Bosch, 2016a, 2016b; Mabweazara, 2013; Mpofu, 2016; Mutsvairo & Harris, 2016; Velghe, 2011). What issues and concerns are emerging from this online research discourse, especially when it comes to Africa?
The scholarship found in this book aims to reflect upon the generational revelations in media and communication research in African communities. Indeed, the contributors range from respected up-and-coming researchers, to mid-career academics and distinguished or semi-retired communication theorists who boast thirty years or more in the African media and communication research field. Putting together intersectoral perspectives from a wide diversity of scholars, whose research experience spans across different timescales, is crucial in understanding the vigorous changes that media and communication studies have gone through in the last thirty years. The scholarsā research speaks about and for their generation, providing a credible assessment of existing and emerging forms of research in media and communication, and further attempting to determine the extent to which technological changes are impacting the discipline. What is the effect of new technologies on media and communication research from both contemporary and traditional perspectives? What theoretical and conceptual engagements should we employ to better understand the evolving field? More importantly, some of the contributors to this volume have an interesting cross-disciplinary research orientation with other fields, including anthropology, sociology and politics. It is important to define the importance of a multidisciplinary examination of media and communication research in Africa, in order to unpack whether it strengthens or weakens our understanding of the discipline.
In this volume, I sought to give African scholars an opportunity to tell their research stories. I recall having a chat with a colleague based in Zimbabwe, who was adamant that Western publishers are not interested in research conducted by African scholars. Is this the reality or just a myth, I wondered. This cynicism among some researchers is challenged and perhaps put to rest in this collection, which provides critical examinations of several media-related research techniques, authored and presented by scholars primarily based in Africa. Indeed, several leading publishers in the West have engaged and collaborated with African media and communication scholars in the past, and a series of scholarly works written by researchers based across the continent have also been published. It is perhaps a valid assumption to believe the best way to tell African stories is to let Africans or at least scholars based in Africa to lead from the front. But then again, there are other researchers based in the Western hemisphere who for several years have been documenting research in Africa. You cannot ignore them because they are equally important. Their experiences, knowledge and overall expertise help us to appreciate the importance of diversity in conducting research in media and communication in Africa.
Using the same approach, this book engages African scholarship on media and communication studies, also capturing important work done by non-African scholars who for many years have visited and conducted research across the continent. Important questions are certainly put forward here. What is an African researcher, and can a non-African researcher have the same or even greater authority on African media affairs? How can research by African media scholars be promoted? These are critical questions, especially in the dominating yet defining age of decolonisation and transformation, the seemingly identical phenomena which are extensively analysed in this collection, with a standalone section of the book dedicated to critiquing the uprisings among scholars and activists alike. To this end, the book provides an important podium for academics (based both in Africa, its diaspora and elsewhere) who are engaged in research related to media and communication studies to freely discuss crucial issues affecting this discipline and to recommend remedies for potential future engagements and collaborations.
Why We Need to Keep Asking
For media and communication researchers in and for Africa, there has never been a better time to rethink ways through which research in this largely coalesced discipline is conducted, perceived and appraised. New opportunities, but also threats that we can no longer afford to ignore, continue to emerge and dominate this seemingly technological deterministic world in which the continent finds itself enmeshed. How, for example, do we handle the ethical dimensions of conducting research online? While we still can, perhaps the time has come for us to redefine conceptual, methodological and theoretical approaches in this field, especially from an African perspective, because the ever-changing research landscape is presenting plenty of opportunities for further exploration. This volume provides scholars working in the media and communication studies across the continent with an opportunity to reengage with their work, past, present and future, and seek to critically expound threats and challenges confronting the discipline in an increasingly globalised and, depending on how you see it, perhaps increasingly isolated Africa.
Indeed, to do justice to the collectionās objectives, there are several questions we ought to pose. What, for instance, does āsub-Saharanā Africa mean? We have to understand the contextual relevance of this defined region to a student and researcher working in the field. What is research? And what about the post-colonialist who associates the term āsub-Saharanā with racism? Surely they cannot just be ignored. What does āAfricanā mean? What is media? What is communication? I have chosen to include a set of these questions because on many occasions I have seen research techniques developed in the West failing when pursed in sub-Saharan Africa. I have seen African students and students who are studying Africa battling to deal with some of the recommendations that are proposed in Western books on media and communication research. A Dutch PhD student doing her fieldwork in Zimbabwe in 2016 told me that each time she produced a form asking her respondents to give their informed consent they became more suspicious about her intentions. Some did not understand what informed consent was, yet it is considered hugely significant when it comes to the traditions of conducting empirical research in Europe. What about illiterate respondents who do not even understand what a signature is? How do you as a researcher deal with that?
These and several other questions will be discussed in this volume, which among other things questions whether there is indeed a universal definition of research. This volume is essential not just because it seeks to contextualise media and communication research from an A...