Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa [Paperback]

Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africaexamines the role that popular media could play to encourage political debate, provide information for development, or critique the very definitions of democracy and development. Drawing on diverse case studies from various regions of the African continent, essays employ a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to ask critical questions about the potential of popular media to contribute to democratic culture, provide sites of resistance, or, conversely, act as agents for the spread of Americanized entertainment culture to the detriment of local traditions. A wide variety of media formats and platforms are discussed, ranging from radio and television to the Internet, mobile phones, street posters, film and music.

As part of the Routledge series Internationalizing Media Studies, the book responds to the important challenge of broadening perspectives on media studies by bringing together a range of expert analyses of media in the African continent that will be of interest to students and scholars of media in Africa and further afield.

Notes on Contributors  Introduction  Part I: The popular media sphere: Theoretical interventions  Chapter 1 De-westernizing media theory to make room for African experience  Francis Nyamnjoh  Chapter 2 Revisiting cultural imperialism and its critics  Eric Louw  Chapter 3 At the crossroads of the formal and popular: convergence culture and new publics in Zimbabwe  Wendy Willems  Chapter 4 Theorising development and democracy through popular community media  Victor Ayedun-Aluma  Chapter 5 Talk radio, democracy and citizenship in (South) Africa  Tanja Bosch  Part II: Popular media, politics and lSl