"Chapter 1 presents the historical and contextual backgrounds of the study. Beginning with a discussion of the UNESCO-commissioned MacBride and Sreberny-Mohammadi reports, the chapter opens up the debate of that era. The findings of Beverly Hawk’s edited book on Africa’s Media Image are outlined, in addition to the work of Mel Bunce et al. (2017). Ghana’s evolving positionality as a strong Pan-African state is discussed, from the pre-independence through the post-independence era to the current Internet and digital age.
Chapter 2 situates this study in the current literature as a way of benefiting from previous research. It discusses the meaning and usefulness of foreign news in general, while also discussing the conceptualisation of terms and expanding upon a discussion relating to the opportunities afforded by the digital and Internet era for a fuller understanding of the world. It continues to evaluate the various determinants of international news coverage. This chapter subsequently describes how Africa has been portrayed in the Western media alongside a discussion of the determinants of international news flow. This chapter zeroes in on the framework within which the African press operates and the influences of international news agencies, and Western education and training on this entire process.
Chapter 3 examines the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of the study. The theories of newsworthiness, intermedia agenda-setting and postcolonial critique are discussed. The inter-relationships among the three theories are outlined, highlighting how they help in addressing the objectives of the study. The theoretical framework and hierarchical influence model of Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese (2014) are recounted.
Chapter 4 discusses the overarching methodology with a detailed outline of the various methods and procedures that inform the study. Ethnographic content analysis (ECA), a method that integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches to content analysis, is explained. This chapter also provides a rationale for the use of multiple methods (triangulation) for data collection as it pertains to this study. It encompasses the sampling methods and procedures employed, the units of analysis that were subject to examination, the period of study, as well as the steps and procedures carried out in the actual data collection in the field. The chapter ends with a discussion of validity, reliability and ethical issues, as well as coding instruments and protocol adopted for the study.
Chapter 5 presents the findings of the ethnographic content analysis that emerged from the examination of articles on the foreign news pages in the newspapers studied. It discusses how the findings of the ECA complement purposes outlined for the research. The chapter ends with a comparison of Africa’s image as portrayed in the Ghanaian press vis à vis the current literature.
Chapter 6 focuses on the description of the findings relating to the ethnographic interview aspect of the data as a follow-up on chapter five. The ethnographic interview reveals the reasoning behind the foreign news selection process in Ghana from the perspective of the journalists and editors. The chapter outlines the qualitative weight of influence and the conditions shaping the foreign news selection. The workings of intermedia agenda-setting relationships are traced through the ethnographic interviews. All the findings are reduced to descriptions involving little or no discussions at that stage of the analysis.
Chapter 7 discusses the findings outlined in Chapters 5 and 6 in line with the objectives of the entire study, in particular through an evaluation of each of the research questions posed in the Introduction. The chapter argues that the coverage of foreign news in the Ghanaian press reinforces existing postcolonial trajectories and relationships that contribute to the existing imbalance in international news flow around the world. The chapter further argues that the soft-power success of China’s Xinhua News Agency not only represents South–South cooperation, but presents a new form of supremacy as a result of the relationship and engagement defined by imbalance of power relations and interactions between the Chinese and their Ghanaian counterpart. The chapter also focuses on the juxtaposition between the dependency of the Ghanaian press on international news agencies and its claim of an African perspective, thus suggesting that the entire scenario represents a resistance and subaltern ambivalence. However, to reach such a conclusion we must first consider to what extent resistance is truly effective. In reality, Ghanaian journalists have done less in practice to establish any potent resistance to their negative proxy coverage of the continent, which begs the question, does the efficacy of resistance exist only in its conception or can it be achieved in practice?" (Outline of the book, pages 7-9)