Popular media, democracy and development in Africa

These 17 essays explore the role of popular media in disseminating democracy and development in Africa. A wide variety of media formats and platforms are discussed, including radio, television, Internet, mobile phones, street posters, film and music. Contents: Introduction: taking it to the streets (Herman Wasserman); De-Westernizing media theory to make room for African experience (Francis B. Nyamnjoh); Revisiting cultural imperialism (P. Eric Louw); At the crossroads of the formal and popular: convergence culture and new publics in Zimbabwe (Wendy Willems); Theorizing popular community media for democracy and development (Victor Ayedun-Aluma); Talk radio, democracy and citizenship in (South) Africa (Tanja Bosch); Popular music as journalism in Africa: issues and contexts (Winston Mano); Street news: the role of posters in democratic participation in Ghana (Audrey Gadzekpo): ‘If you rattle a snake, be prepared to be bitten’: popular culture, politics and the Kenyan news media (George Ogola); Post-apartheid South African social movements on film (Sean Jacobs); ‘The Amazing Race’ in Burkina Faso (H. Leslie Steeves); (South) African articulations of the ordinary, or, how popular print commodities (re)organize our lives (Sonja Narunsky-Laden); Popular TV programmes and audiences in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) (Marie-Soleil Frre); New technologies as tools of empowerment: African youth and public sphere participation (Levi Obijiofor); Transnational flows and local identities in Muslim northern Nigerian films: from ‘Dead Poets Society’ through ‘Mohabbatein’ to ‘So …’ (Abdalla Uba Adamu); Local stories, global discussions: websites, politics and identity in African contexts (‘Kongo’ websites, ‘Nuba’ websites, Cameroonian anglophone websites, Berber websites) (Inge Brinkman, Siri Lamoureaux, Daniela Merolla and Mirjam de Bruijn); Survival of ‘radio culture’ in a converged networked new media environment (Okoth Fred Mudhai); Policing popular media in Africa (Monica B. Chibita). [ASC Leiden abstract]