1st Edition

Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Africa Conceptual and Empirical Considerations

Edited By Jacinta Maweu, Admire Mare Copyright 2021
280 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores the role and place of popular, traditional and digital media platforms in the mediatization, representation and performance of various conflicts and peacebuilding interventions in the African context. The role of the media in conflict is often depicted as either ‘good’ (as symbolized by peace journalism) or ‘bad’ (as exemplified by war journalism), but this book moves... Read more

Foreword by Cyril Obi 

1. Introduction. Changing the tide: Re-examining the interplay of media, conflict and peacebuilding in Africa

Jacinta Maweu and Admire Mare

Part I. Different Conceptual and Methodological Considerations

2. Rethinking peace journalism in light of Ubuntu

Colin Chasi and Ylva Rodny-Gumede

3. Researching Africa Peace Journalism through Borderlands: A Theoretical and Methodological Exploration

Fredrick Ogenga

4. The Limits of Peace Journalism in Restricted Societies: Reporting the Gukurahundi Genocide in Zimbabwe

Phillip Santos

5. The Prospects and Challenges of mediating peacebuilding in Africa: Towards a human rights journalism approach

Ibrahim Seaga Shaw

6. The Role of Folk Media in Peacebuilding: Folk Storytelling Tradition as a Site for Peaceful Negotiation for Gender Harmony in African Families

Egara Kabaji

Part II. The Good and Bad of Traditional Media in Conflict and Peacebuilding

7. A Critical Reflection on the Role of the Media in Conflict in Africa

Dumisani Moyo

8. Assessing the impact of terrorism and counter-terrorism laws on freedom of the media in Kenya

Benjamin Muindi

9. Catalysts of conflict or Messengers of Peace? Promoting Interfaith Dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Kenya through the Media

Jacinta Maweu

10. Media Diplomacy and the Kenya-Somalia Maritime Territorial Dispute

Doreen Muyonga

11. "In their own words": Journalistic mediation of electoral conflict in polarized Zimbabwe

Admire Mare and Stanley Tsarwe

12. The role of the media in conflict and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone

Francis Sowa

13. War Reporting In Africa: The Case Of Sudan’s War In The Nuba Mountains

Ogata Moganda Silvester

14. Peace-makers or Peace-Wreckers? Discursive Construction of Domestic Conflict and Peacebuilding in the Zimbabwean Diaspora Media

Tendai Chari

Part III: Digital Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding

15. Precarity, Technology, Identity: The Sociology of Conflict Reporting in South Sudan

Richard Stupart

16: "Walking through History" Together: Gukurahundi, Memory and the Role of Digital Media in Shaping "Post-conflict" Zimbabwe

Mphathisi Ndlovu

17. "We have Degrees in Violence": a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Online Constructions of Electoral Violence in Post-2000 Zimbabwe

Allen Munoriyarwa

18. Of Beaches, Monkeys and Good Old Days: How Social Media Race-Talk is Dismantling the ‘Rainbow Nation’

Shepherd Mpofu

Biography

Jacinta Maweu is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Media Studies and an Associate Faculty Member at the Institute of Climate Change and Adaptation (ICCA) at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her key research interests revolve around media and democracy, media and human rights, media in peacebuilding, media ethics and the political economy of the media.

Admire Mare is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Communication at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg. His research interests include digital media, digital journalism cultures and practices, media and democracy, youth studies, the intersection between technology and society, mediation of conflict and peacebuilding initiatives, innovation in African journalism, the role of artificial intelligence in newsrooms, sociology of African news and digital campaigns. He currently leads the international research project Social Media, Misinformation and Elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe (SoMeKeZi) funded by the Social Science Research Council (2019–2021).