Publics in Africa in a Digital Age

Publics in Africa in a Digital Age PDF Author: Sharath Srinivasan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000433536
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book

Book Description
Across Africa, digital media are providing scholars with a reason and opportunity for revisiting the question, and the analytical lens, of publics with new vigour and less normative baggage. This book brings together a rich set of empirically grounded analyses of the diverse digital spaces and networks of communication springing up across the Eastern African region. The contributions offer a plural set of reflections on whether and how we can usefully think about these spaces and networks as convening publics, where citizens come together to discuss matters of common interest. The authors make clear the need to unshackle such studies from slavish acceptance of outsiders’ prescriptions on what constitutes desirable publics. They highlight the importance of being attentive to rapidly changing everyday realities across Africa in which people are coming together around the circulation of ideas in ways that include digital means of communications. In so doing, the contributions bring forward new ways of thinking about, through and with publics, alongside other heritages in Africanist scholarship that have continued salience. Looking outwards from the region, such different perspectives on our digitally mediated world offer theoretical novelty that advances how we think about the notion of publics and their political significance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

Publics in Africa in a Digital Age

Publics in Africa in a Digital Age PDF Author: Sharath Srinivasan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000433536
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book

Book Description
Across Africa, digital media are providing scholars with a reason and opportunity for revisiting the question, and the analytical lens, of publics with new vigour and less normative baggage. This book brings together a rich set of empirically grounded analyses of the diverse digital spaces and networks of communication springing up across the Eastern African region. The contributions offer a plural set of reflections on whether and how we can usefully think about these spaces and networks as convening publics, where citizens come together to discuss matters of common interest. The authors make clear the need to unshackle such studies from slavish acceptance of outsiders’ prescriptions on what constitutes desirable publics. They highlight the importance of being attentive to rapidly changing everyday realities across Africa in which people are coming together around the circulation of ideas in ways that include digital means of communications. In so doing, the contributions bring forward new ways of thinking about, through and with publics, alongside other heritages in Africanist scholarship that have continued salience. Looking outwards from the region, such different perspectives on our digitally mediated world offer theoretical novelty that advances how we think about the notion of publics and their political significance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

Television in Africa in the Digital Age

Television in Africa in the Digital Age PDF Author: Gilbert Motsaathebe
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030688542
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book

Book Description
This book places television in Africa in the digital context. It address the onslaught of multimedia platforms, digital migration and implication of this technology for society. The discussions in the chapters contained in this book encompass a wide range of issues such as digital disruption of television news, internet television and video on demand platforms, adaptations, digital migration, business strategies and management approaches, PBS, consumption patterns, scheduling and programming, evangelical television, and many others. The book is an important reading for academics, students and television practitioners. It offers an insightful view of television in Africa.

African Literature in the Digital Age

African Literature in the Digital Age PDF Author: Shola Adenekan
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847012388
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book

Book Description
The first book-length study on the relationship between African literature and new media.

African Languages in a Digital Age

African Languages in a Digital Age PDF Author: Don Osborn
Publisher: IDRC
ISBN: 0796922497
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book

Book Description
With increasing numbers of computers and diffusion of the internet around the world, localisation of the technology, and the content it carries, into the many languages people speak is becoming an ever more important area for discussion and action. Localisation, simply put, includes translation and cultural adaptation of user interfaces and software applications, as well as the creation and translation of internet content in diverse languages. It is essential in making information and communication technology more accessible to the populations of the poorer countries, increasing its relevance to their lives, needs, and aspirations, and ultimately in bridging the 'digital divide'.

Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa

Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa PDF Author: Nicolas Friederici
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026236283X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book

Book Description
The hope and hype about African digital entrepreneurship, contrasted with the reality on the ground in local ecosystems. In recent years, Africa has seen a digital entrepreneurship boom, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into tech cities, entrepreneurship trainings, coworking spaces, innovation prizes, and investment funds. Politicians and technologists have offered Silicon Valley-influenced narratives of boundless opportunity and exponential growth, in which internet-enabled entrepreneurship allows Africa to "leapfrog" developmental stages to take a leading role in the digital revolution. This book contrasts these aspirations with empirical research about what is actually happening on the ground. The authors find that although the digital revolution has empowered local entrepreneurs, it does not untether local economies from the continent's structural legacies.

African Media and the Digital Public Sphere

African Media and the Digital Public Sphere PDF Author: Okoth Fred Mudhai
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Series in International Political Communication
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book

Book Description
African Media and the Digital Public Sphere examines, from theoretical and empirical perspectives, the claims that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are catalysts of democratic change in Africa. Contributors do so from optimist, pragmatist-realist and pessimist stances through analyses of words and deeds of various political actors and organizations or institutions, from government units to political parties and party leaders to civil society organizations and minority groups. It is the first such publication contributed to by various African and Africanist scholars, based in Africa and around the world, whose research and/or practice activities focus on the relationship between new digital media and democracy on the continent.

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics PDF Author: Nanjala Nyabola
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178699433X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book

Book Description
From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa. While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life. Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how 'fake news', a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola's ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.

Oral Literature in the Digital Age

Oral Literature in the Digital Age PDF Author: Mark Turin
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1909254304
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital cultural archives, their involvement raises important practical and ethical questions. This volume explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilised as a consequence of being archived. Fieldwork reports by linguists and anthropologists in three continents provide concrete examples of overcoming barriers -- ethical, practical and conceptual -- in digital documentation projects. Oral Literature In The Digital Age is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities in order to document and preserve oral traditions.

Africa’s Development Dynamics 2021 Digital Transformation for Quality Jobs

Africa’s Development Dynamics 2021 Digital Transformation for Quality Jobs PDF Author: African Union Commission
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 926460653X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book

Book Description
Africa’s Development Dynamics uses lessons learned in the continent’s five regions – Central, East, North, Southern and West Africa – to develop policy recommendations and share good practices. Drawing on the most recent statistics, this analysis of development dynamics attempts to help African leaders reach the targets of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 at all levels: continental, regional, national and local.

Media Ownership in Africa in the Digital Age

Media Ownership in Africa in the Digital Age PDF Author: Winston Mano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000713563
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book

Book Description
Who owns the media and communications in Africa today and with what implications? The book elegantly answers this urgent question by unpacking multiple dimensions of media ownership through rare and authoritative perspectives, including both historical and contemporary digital developments. It traces the evolving forms of ownership of media and communications in specific African contexts, showing how they interact with broader changes in and outside the continent. The book also shows how Big Techs, such as Meta (formerly known as Facebook), are involved in a scramble for Africa’s digital ecosystem and how their advance brings both opportunities and concerns about ownership and control. The chapters analyse evolving forms of ownership and their implications on media concentration and democracy across Africa. The book offers a nuanced account of how media ownership structures are in some instances captured with an ever-growing and complex ecosystem that also has new opportunities for public interest media. Offering a significant representation of the trends and diversity of existing media systems, the book goes beyond the postcolonial geographical divisions of North and Sub-Saharan Africa to highlight common patterns and significant similarities and differences of communications ownerships between and within African countries. The contributors expose media and communications ownership patterns in Africa that are centralised and yet decentralising and in some cases, battling, resurging and globalising.