1st Edition
Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Africa Conceptual and Empirical Considerations
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 beyond this binary to highlight the ‘in-between’ role that the media often plays in times of conflict. The volume does not only focus on the relationship between mass media, conflict and peacebuilding processes but it broadens its scope by critically analysing the dynamic and emergent roles of popular and digital media platforms in a continent where the semi-literate and oral communities still rely heavily on popular communication platforms to get news and information. Whilst social media platforms have been hailed for their assumed democratic and digital dividends, this book does not only focus on these positive aspects but also shines a light on dark forms of participation which are fuelling racial, gender, ethnic, political and religious conflicts in highly polarized and stratified societies.
Highlighting the many ways in which traditional, digital and popular media can be used to both escalate conflicts and promote peacebuilding, this volume will be a useful resource for students, researchers and civil society groups interested in peace and conflict studies, journalism and media studies in different contexts within Africa.
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).
