[Commlist] CFP on streaming in Africa for posting on Commlist

_Call for chapters: Streaming Africa: Storytelling, Platform Power and 
Cultural Production_

Editors: Dr Alexia Smit (Centre for Film & Media Studies, University of 
Cape Town) & Dr Viraj Suparsad (Centre for Film & Media Studies, 
University of Cape Town)

The global rise of streaming platforms has seen conversations in film 
and television studies pivot. Medaglia (2023) notes that single medium 
understandings no longer capture the epoch as mediums converge in novel 
and hybrid ways. Streaming platforms have extended globally with a speed 
unprecedented in broadcast and satellite television, leapfrogging local 
regulation and infrastructural barriers.  New, distinctly transnational, 
forms of storytelling have developed to cater both to a sense of the 
local and to meet a vast global audience, reminding us of Parrot’s 
(2023: 05) “strategic resignifications”.

These radical shifts in the consumption and distribution of video 
content are, however, marked by existing economic and political power 
relations. Chambwera (2021:42) has highlighted the role of streaming 
platforms in advancing technocolonialism:

There is a growing body of literature that acknowledges the colonial and 
imperial tendencies in the way that digital technologies are created and 
implemented (Madianou 2019; Mann and Daly 2019; Milan and Trere 2019; 
Young 2019). Alongside this view is one that sees platform capitalism 
(as exemplified by Netflix, Spotify etc.) as perpetuation of unequal 
power relations between the North, where dominant platforms originate 
from, and the South, which is mostly just a consumer (see Ricaurte 2019).

Given both the market dominance of Western platforms and the centring of 
Western scholarship in this field, Africa has received scant attention 
in debates on streaming content. And yet the African context provides an 
important site for understanding the power relations and complexities of 
global streaming culture.  This edited collection is thus seeking 
contributions from scholars particularly interested in African 
engagements with such conversations. The aim of this collection is to 
centre African perspectives and highlight that the African streaming 
cultures are not peripheral to global streaming but rather are key sites 
for theorising cultural production and global flows of information. We 
are particularly interested in the circulation of streaming texts within 
the African continent as well as, discussions of how African 
storytellers manage the politics of providing “local originals” to 
global streamers.

We invite submissions from scholars working on high quality research in 
this area specifically focusing on streaming cultures in Africa, the 
textual dimensions of streaming content, work engaging audiences in the 
context of the above conversation as well as work on platforms and its 
accompanying infrastructures.

Please submit a 1000-1500 word extended abstract/chapter proposal that 
outlines approach, key argument and key sources. Please also include an 
author biography (or biographies for work with multiple authors) of 150 
words. All submissions and enquiries must be made to both editors Dr 
Alexia Smit ((_Alexia.Smit /at/ uct.ac.za) <mailto:(Alexia.Smit /at/ uct.ac.za)>_) and 
Dr Viraj Suparsad ((_Viraj.Suparsad /at/ uct.ac.za) 
<mailto:(Viraj.Suparsad /at/ uct.ac.za)>_) by 30 April 2026. Accepted authors 
will be notified no later than 30 May 2026.

Full chapters (7000-10000 words in Harvard style referencing) will be 
expected by late 2026 with clearer timelines emerging once the publisher 
is finalised. We are in conversation with a variety of publishers though 
we seek to ultimately publish the work as an edited collection with 
Bloomsbury Academic in their Digital Africa series.

Areas of interest can include but are not limited to:

  * Textual analyses of African streaming texts
  * Emergences of African futurism in these conversations
  * Discussion of African audiences for streaming media
  * Transnational viewing publics and/or diasporic audiences
  * Work on how streaming texts negotiate ideas about local identity and
    culture
  * Analyses of how Western generic tropes and formulae impact African
    streaming stories
  * Questions of race, class and gender as they are represented in
    Africa-centred streaming media
  * Work on remakes, franchises and relocations of global stories in
    African settings
  * Examinations of the political economy of streaming media in Africa
  * Studies of Africa-to-Africa transnational movements or adaptations
    (eg. South African television series adapted in Kenya or Nigeria)
  * Youth cultures, fandoms and participatory practices in the context
    of streaming

Reference list

Chambwera,C. 2021. “Understanding Netflix’s Foray into Original 
Productions in South Africa: A ‘Jet Plane’ and ‘Helicopter’ View”, in 
Motsaathebe, G. & Chiumbu, S. H. (eds). /Television in Africa in  the 
Digital Age/. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 39-58..

Medaglia, F. 2023. Transmediality vs. Intermediality in a Transcultural 
Context. /Journal of/

/Comparative Literature and Aesthetics/, 46(4): 138-146.

Parrot, A. 2023. Streaming Movements and Cultural Identity in the New 
Order of Transnational Remakes. /Vista/, 11: 1-19.

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