[ecrea] CFP: Beyond Normative Approaches: Everyday Media Culture in Africa

Call for Papers: Beyond Normative Approaches: Everyday Media Culture in
Africa



An international conference organized by the Department of Media Studies
at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Department of Communication
Studies at the University of Michigan and with support from the
Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of
Westminster



Dates: 27-29 February 2012

Venue: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Website: http://bit.ly/oPUsPu<http://bit.ly/oPUsPu>



Deadline for abstracts: 30 October 2011



We invite contributions that address the everyday lived experiences of
Africans in their interaction with different kinds of media: old and
new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national. All over
the continent today, country by country, there are signs of growth and
change-a buzz of energy stimulated, in part, by the rapid spread and
impact of new mobile communication technologies and the new economic,
political and social affordances which they help to create. The rise of
these technologies, and the new forms of media practice and use
associated with them, is in parallel with the emergence of new forms of
commercial mediation and communications enterprises across the global
South, which arguably complicate the role of the media in African
cultures and societies.



Since media studies began in the 1970s, its object of study has changed
in fundamental ways. Media were at first conceptualized almost wholly
within the frame of the nation-state, its national politics and culture.
The bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has
studied media through the lens of media-state relations, hereby adopting
liberal democracy as normative ideal and focusing on the potential
contribution of African media to development and democratization. This
approach has insufficiently looked at the actual role of media in
African societies but instead focused on what roles media ought to play
on the continent. Instead of understanding media on the continent on its
own terms, scholars have often produced ahistorical accounts that
posture as negative imprints of Western models of media-state relations.
Furthermore, the heavy focus on media-state relations in studies on
media in Africa has ignored both the way in which ordinary people relate
to media and the increasingly important role of private capital and the
market in the realm of African media.



Since the 1990s, the diffusion of continuing technological innovations
in digital media and telecommunications, driven by the world economy,
has changed the media landscape beyond recognition, producing the
globalized world that all of us inhabit today. The question which then
arises is what the study of media can tell us about Africa, in all its
diversity, and the position of African societies in the world today.
Among other issues, we invite participants to engage with one or more of
the following questions:



Audiences, lived experience and changing notions of identity

*         How can we research and theorize media cultures in today's
Africa?

*         What roles do different forms of media play in the everyday
lives of Africans?

*         How do global and national media contribute to changing
notions of African identities?



Media, participation and resistance

*         What role do old and new media play in forms of resistance on
the continent?

*         To what extent are media contributing to emerging
participatory cultures in Africa?

*         What does the diffusion and uptake of new media technologies
tell us about social change taking place in Africa today?



Consumer culture and the media

*         How can we understand the contribution of media to the rise of
consumer cultures and consumption practices in Africa?

*         What role do media and communications play in the increasing
commodification of development?

*         Who are the new entrepreneurial elites who are driving the
diffusion of technological innovation in Africa?



For Africa-based scholars who would like to participate but require
travel funding (primarily for airfare) to do so, please include a
funding request with an estimated travel budget. A small amount of
funding will be available to support presenters' participation.



There will be a modest registration fee (R 175 for graduate students,
R350 for faculty) to cover the costs of snacks and some meals.



Proposals for 20-minute papers should include the following: paper
title, author, institutional affiliation and postal address, email
address, abstract of no more than 300 words. Proposals should be sent on
or before 30 October 2011 to Wendy Willems at: (wendy.willems /at/ wits.ac.za)



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