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Everyday Media Culture in Africa: Audiences and Users

Wendy Willems, Winston Mano (eds.)

London: Routledge (2017), 260 pp.

"This volume examines the lived experiences of Africans and their interaction with different kinds of media: old and new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national, material and virtual. By offering a comparative, critical and largely qualitative account of audiences and users across ... a range of national contexts in different regions of Africa, the book examines media through the voices and perspectives of those engaging with it rather than reducing audiences and users to numbers and statistics, ready to be exploited as potential target markets or as political constituencies. The critical, qualitative research perspective adopted in this book enables us to gain a better understanding of how African viewers, listeners and users make sense of a range of media forms; what role these play in their everyday lives and what audience and user engagement can tell us about how citizens perceive the state, how they imagine themselves in the wider world and how they relate to each other. The book argues that the experiences of audiences and engagements of users with a range of media—newspapers, radio, television, magazines, internet, mobile phones, social media—are always grounded in particular contexts, worldviews and knowledge systems of life and wisdom: ‘It is akin to the tortoise. The tortoise never leaves its shell behind. It carries it wherever it goes’ (Chivaura 2006: 221). African media audiences and users carry their contexts and cultural repertoires in the same way a tortoise carries its shell. Thus far, the bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has addressed the policy and regulatory aspects as well as the relation between media institutions and the state (Willems 2014a). While studies on media, democratization and press freedom are invaluable, the ways in which ordinary people make sense of, and relate to, media in their everyday lives are largely left beyond consideration. As Barber (1997: 357) has pointed out, ‘[w]hat has not yet been sufficiently explored is the possibility that specific African audiences have distinctive, conventional modes and styles of making meaning, just as performers/speakers do. We need to ask how audiences do their work of interpretation’." (Page 4) more

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Handbook of Comparative Communication Research
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Frank Esser, Thomas Hanitzsch (eds.)

New York; London: Routledge (2012), xxi, 544 pp.

"The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of comparative communication research. It fills an obvious gap in the literature and offers an extensive and interdisciplinary discussion of the general approach of comparative research, its prospect an ... more

Where Are You Africa? Church and Society in the Mobile Phone Age

Castor M. Goliama

Mankon, Bamenda (CM): Langaa (2010), xxii, 240 pp.

"On the basis of a thorough review of the growing literature on the mobile phone and the cultures it inspires, Goliama highlights the ambivalent nature of mobile cultures for the Roman Catholic Church's evangelization mission in Africa. He argues not only for the continued merits of face-to-face com ... more

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Telenovelas und kulturelle Zäsur: Intermediale Gattungspassagen in Lateinamerika
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Joachim Michael

Bielefeld: transcript (2010), 400 pp.

"Jenseits von Kulturkritik und Rechtfertigungsrhetorik untersucht Joachim Michael die Telenovela als Ergebnis des medialen Umbruchs der lateinamerikanischen Kulturen. Er zeigt, dass die Telenovela mehr als nur ein Format ist – sie markiert eine spezifische Kultur, deren eigentümliche Faszination ... more

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Internationalizing Media Studies
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Daya Kishan Thussu (ed.)

London; New York: Routledge (2009), xiii, 320 pp.

"This collection of essays by internationally-acclaimed scholars from around the world aims to stimulate a debate about the imperatives for internationalizing media studies by broadening its remit, including innovative research methodologies, taking account of regional and national specificities and ... more

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Arab Media: Power and Weakness
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Kai Hafez (ed.)

New York; London: Continuum (2008), ix, 277 pp.

"Arab Media: Power and Weakness is comprised of research synopses (comprehensive overviews over the current academic literature and “blind spots” of research in one of the above mentioned fields); original empirical research; and theoretical papers. The result is a comprehensive handbook of up-t ... more

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Midiatização e processos sociais na América Latina

Antônio Fausto Neto, Pedro Gilberto Gomes, José Luiz Braga, Jairo Ferreira (eds.)

São Paulo: Paulus (2008), 333 pp.

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The Art of Dialogue: Religion, Communication and Global Media Culture
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Ineke de Feijter

Berlin: Lit (2007), 398 pp.

"Media involve religious dimensions and have become the religious "iconofiers" of our world. People increasingly use media for shaping their - religious - identity and their search with respect to questions of ultimate meaning. The author first provides a succinct overview of the context and implica ... more

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Pastoral da comunicação: Diálogo entre fé e cultura
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Joana T. Puntel, Helena Corazza

São Paulo: Paulinas (2007), 143 pp.

"Em 2007, a Pastoral da Comunicação comemora 50 anos de atividades. Uma de suas maiores dificuldades é realizar uma comunicação eficiente com o povo, atendendo aos apelos de organização e planejamento por parte da Igreja. Para responder às necessidades de um trabalho sério de comunicação ... more