[Commlist] Call for Book Chapters: Media, Journalism, and Collective Memory in Africa: Centring Epistemologies, Power and Culture

CallforBookChapters

Title:Media, Journalism, and Collective Memory in 
Africa:CentringEpistemologies,Powerand Culture

Editors: Silas Udenze(University of Toronto, 
Canada)&TempleUwalaka(University ofCanberra, Australia)

Preamble

Media and journalism are central to the social construction of 
collective memory, which shapes how societies make sense of the 
pasttoorient the present and imagine the future. Through processes 
ofselection, narration, visualization, and circulation, media and 
journalistic practicesdeterminewhich events are remembered, which are 
marginalized or silenced, and which remain sites of ongoing contestation 
(Zelizer, 1992; Hoskins, 2014; Neiger et al., 2011). Journalism, in 
particular, functions as arecorder of events and a key mnemonic 
institution, repeatedly returning to certain pasts through 
anniversaries, commemorations, archives, and crisis reporting (Kitch, 
2002; Edy, 1999; Nfor & Udenze, 2026), while marginalizing others 
through silence or distortion. Consequently, the relationship between 
media, journalism, and collective memory is complex and politically 
charged. In Africa,historyof colonialism, slavery, liberation struggles, 
military rule, civil war, and authoritarian governance continueto shape 
contemporary media systems and journalistic practices (Ndlovu et al., 
2024;Aiseng&Uzuegbunam, 2025). At the same time, African 
societiespossessrich traditions of oral history, storytelling, ritual, 
and communal remembrance that coexist (Mbembe, 2002; Udo & Naidu, 
2025;Mwambari, 2021; Sanni & Phiri, 2024), often uneasily, with 
Western-derived media institutions and archival logics. This makes 
Africa a critical site for rethinking dominant theories of collective 
memory, which havelargely beendeveloped from Western experiences.

Scholarship in media and memory studies has emphasized the increasing 
mediatization of memory, highlighting how digital platforms, social 
media, and mobile communication technologies shape how the past is 
recorded, circulated, and contested (Uwalakaet al., 2025; Hoskins, 2024; 
Udenze, 2025). In Africa, media such as WhatsApp, Facebook, documentary 
films, and community radio are critical conduits for vernacular 
memory-making, enabling journalists, activists, artists, and ordinary 
citizens to document livedhistories, challenge official narratives, and 
sustain counter-memories. These practices blur the boundaries between 
journalism, activism, and everyday communication, which raises critical 
questions about authority, credibility, ethics, and power in the 
production of public memory. Journalism studies further suggest that 
news media reflect collective memory and structure it through routines 
of selection, framing, repetition, and temporality (Nfor & Udenze, 2026; 
Zelizer, 2008). In African media landscapes marked by political 
pressure, economic precarity, and uneven access to technology, 
journalists often engage in memory work under conditions of constraint 
(Nfor & Udenze, 2026). This includes navigating censorship, negotiating 
trauma, reporting on unresolved past violence, and balancing 
professional norms with communal obligations (Aiseng&Uzuegbunam, 2025). 
At the same time, non-elite actors, citizens, diasporic communities, 
social movements, and cultural producers have increasingly taken on 
journalistic functions, producing alternative archives and mnemonic 
narratives that complicate institutional accounts of the past. In other 
words, media institutions, journalists, artists, and everyday citizens 
play a crucial role in remembering and forgetting. From newspapers, 
radio, and television to social media, messaging apps, archives, 
monuments, and oral storytelling, memory work is embedded in 
communicative practices that are deeply political in the continent.

Consequently, thisbookseeksto bring these strands of argument into 
dialogue by interrogating how memory is produced, mediated, and 
contested across African media and journalism ecologies. It aims to 
foreground African experiences and epistemologies, challenge Eurocentric 
assumptions in memory,mediaand journalism studies, and highlight how 
communicative practices, both professional and informal, shape 
collective understandings of history. This proposed 
bookisalsointerestedin how power, technology,and culture intersect in 
the construction of public memory, and how journalistic norms are 
reshaped in contexts marked by postcolonial legacies, infrastructural 
inequalities, and rapid digital transformation. By centering Africa, 
this proposed book positions the continent not as a peripheral case but 
as a generative site for rethinking how media and journalism function as 
arenas of memory, power, and democratic struggle in a rapidly changing 
world.

Key Themes and Topics

Theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions, including but 
not limited to the themesbelow,are welcome:

  *

    Journalism and the politics of remembering and forgetting in Africa

  *

    Media representations of colonialism, independence, and liberation
    struggles

  *

    Collective memory, trauma, and post-conflict reconciliation in the 
media

  *

    Digital media, social media platforms, and memory practices and 
activism

  *

    Archives, counter-archives, and vernacular memory-making

  *

    Media, memorialization, and national identity formation

  *

    Journalism, authoritarianism, and contested historical narratives

  *

    Popular culture, Arts, storytelling, and everyday memory practices

  *

    Media ethics, truth-telling, and historical accountability

  *

    Artificial intelligence, datafication, and the future of memory in
    African media

This call particularly encourages submissions from early-career, 
mid-level andestablished researchers, media practitioners, activists, 
artists, policy analysts based in or working on Africa, as well as 
interdisciplinary approaches from media studies, journalism studies, 
memory studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and cultural 
studies.

Submission Guidelines

  *

    Abstract length:350words. Include chapter title, abstract, author
    name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and a short bio (100 words),
    and send to:(memorymediajournalism /at/ gmail.com)
    <mailto:(memorymediajournalism /at/ gmail.com)>no later than30 April
    2026.Please note thatifwereach the number of submissionsbefore
    thisdeadline,wemight stop receiving abstracts.Accepted paper will go
    through a double-blind peer reviewprocess.

The targeted publishers for this project areRoutledge African Media, 
Culture andCommunication Studies&De GruyterBrill’s Media and Cultural 
Memory.

Key Dates

  *

    Abstractssubmission deadline:30 April 2026

  *

    Notifications: 8 May 2026

  *

    Full chapter submission deadline(Goes out for peer review):30 July 2026

  *

    Final manuscripts are due: 16 September2026

  *

    Book publication date: December 2026

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