News from the African perspective,

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News from the African perspective,

An alternative narrative to Afro-pessimism discourse

Gabriëlla van der Linden

Student number: S2816563

Master of Journalism

University of Groningen

Supervisor and first reader: prof.dr. H. Wijfjes

Second reader: dr. A. Heinrich

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ABSTRACT

The aim for this thesis is to research how Africa and Africans are represented and framed in ZAM

Magazine, and if and in what way the image of Africa may differ from Afro-pessimism discourse in

Western mainstream media. Previous studies on Afro-pessimism in Western mainstream media note the extensive negative and stereotypical representation of Africa and the use of Othering to make Africa different from the West. In order to investigate how ZAM frames Africa the analysis includes articles published in the Chronicle section of ZAM during a six-month period. Theoretically the thesis is based on literature on Afro-pessimism in Western media. Methodologically, the research uses quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The results show that ZAM, although there are some similarities, provides an alternative to Afro-pessimism discourse.

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INTRODUCTION

‘Not all countries are created equal when it comes to news coverage’ (De Beer, 2010: 596)

The core countries, the major world powers and the countries that contain most of the wealth of the planet, the West, dominate the global news flow. News stories about the periphery, the rest of the world who are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization, are underrepresented and when covered, the stories are mostly ‘negative’, according to De Beer scholar in journalism studies. It is especially Africa which get a lot of negative media attention in the Western world (De Beer, 2010: 596, 597). Western media portray Africa in stereotypical, oversimplified and essentialized ways for example as corrupt, underdeveloped and as a continent plagued by diseases. This has become known as the Afro-pessimism discourse in Western media coverage (Ibid.: 597). This refers ‘to a sense of pessimism about the continent’s ability to overcome pressing challenges related to poverty, health, development or governance’ (Nothias, 2012: 54).

I will use the theory of Edward Said, seen as one of the founders of postcolonial studies, about the Orient to explain why Afro-pessimism could be so influential. In his theory about Orientalism Edward Said (1978) used Michael Foucault’s ‘discourse’ and Antoni Gramsci’s idea of ‘hegemony’ to show how the West was able to create, produce and maintain the image of the Orient as the different ‘Other’. Said refers to the Middle East while talking about the Orient. However, this theory can be applied to the African continent as well. Within the Afro-pessimism discourse, which is like Orientalism a discourse of ‘Otherness’, Africa is set aside from the West. Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, an important Congolese philosopher and professor in African studies, has dealt with this ‘idea’ of Africa constructed by the Western world. This Western framework within Africa is studied, calls Mudimbe (1988) the ‘Colonial Library’, the totality of knowledge and the immense system of representations about Africa that has over the centuries collectively invented by the Western world. Mudimbe shows that this knowledge consists of negative, oversimplified and stereotypical images about Africa and Africans, which still continue to colonise our minds. These images have become ingrained in Western thought.

Research on the coverage of Africa in Western mainstream media - the mass media that influence a large number of people and reflect and shape the prevailing currents of thought - found that media images of Africa in Western media has been and still are formed, informed, and reformed by this Afro-pessimism discourse (De Beer, 2010; Nothias, 2012; Harth, 2012; Okechukwu, 2014; Zhang and Matingwina, 2016; Fair, 1993: 10). In this way, media may help to reproduce this limited and stereotypical discourse on Africa. This has implications for how members of Western society look at Africa, because what we learn about the African continent in the Western world, originated in large part from media-produced content (Fair, 1993: 6). Literature on Africa’s media image in Western mainstream media will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4.

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7 Maybe if alternative media, which may contain content with more dissenting thought as they do not reflect prevailing opinion, represent Africa differently, mainstream media can take this as an example to learn from. Therefore, it is interesting to study an alternative media outlet that tries to shed another light on Africa. In this thesis my focus will be on ZAM Magazine, an online English magazine which supports African investigative journalism. They try to challenge this ‘clichéd’ and stereotypical perspective on Africa. ZAM tries to portray Africa differently, in a more realistic way. It is interesting to look if ZAM talks differently about Africa compared to Western mainstream media.

My goal for this thesis is to research how Africa and Africans are represented and framed in this alternative media outlet, and if and in what way the image of Africa may differ from Afro-pessimism discourse in Western mainstream media. Therefore, my research question is: How is Africa represented and framed by ZAM Magazine and does this representation provide an alternative to Afro-pessimism in Western mainstream media? The comparison with Western mainstream media is based on the literature discussed in the theoretical chapters, while the empirical research is on the content of

ZAM.

To answer the research question, I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to look at ZAM’s different framing strategies in seven areas. These areas are based on the literature of Afro-pessimism discourse in Western media coverage, and categorized as follows: economic, politics, economic/politics, social, health, geography, and culture. The articles for analysis are selected from the Chronicle section of ZAM – core of the magazine and the investigative journalism part of their website - from the edition of August 2017 up to February/March 2018.

The thesis consist of the following chapters. I start with the theoretical framework based on literature study. In chapter 1, Edward Said’s theory about Orientalism will be discussed, where I explain what discourse is, how it is related to power and hegemony and to the process of Othering. In chapter 2, I will apply Orientalism to the African continent by examining the ‘idea’ of Africa and linking it to Afro-pessimism discourse. I will also explain how this image of Africa came into existence by outlining the roots of the discourse in imperial and colonial thinking. In chapter 3, I will elaborate on how Western media play a role in representation, stereotyping and framing and in reproducing the dominant discourses in society. And in chapter 4, I will discuss Afro-pessimism in Western media by first explaining the general practices, followed by the dominant images of Africa. Afterwards, I will continue with the analysis segment. In chapter 5, the method chosen for the research is explained. In chapter 6, the findings of the analysis is discussed. Finally, the conclusion provides an answer to the research question.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Chapter 1: The image of the Orient

In this chapter I will explain the theory of Orientalism, which is a discourse of ‘Otherness’. This theory allows to understand how the Western world could create a powerful image of the Orient, the different ‘Other’. In paragraph 1.1 will be explained what discourse entails. Paragraph 1.2 is about how a certain discourse can prevail over others through hegemony. In paragraph 1.3 is described how ‘Othering’ is used in creating the image of the Orient.

1.1 Orientalism

Writer and Academic, Edward W. Said, described as one of the founders of postcolonial studies, came up with his theory about Orientalism (1978) ‘to challenge the authority of Western knowledge of – and power over – the Orient,’ referring to the Middle East (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 64). ‘Orientalism tries to answer the question of why, when we [people living in the Western world] think of the Middle East for example, we have a preconceived notion of what kind of people live there, what they believe, and how they act. Even though we may never have been there, or indeed even met anyone from there’ (Jhally, 2005: 2). Orientalism deals with the question of how the Western world comes to understand these people, these ‘strangers,’ who are unfamiliar to them (Ibid.).

People living in the Western world, out of a certain intention to understand and control what is for them a different world, made according to Said, a powerful and stereotypical image of the Orient, the far away East (Said, 1978: 12). This construction of the Orient is problematic according to Said, because it favours essentialism and Othering. Therefore, the way that we now acquire this produced knowledge is not innocent or objective but the end result of a process that reflects certain interests, that of the West (Jhally, 2005: 2). ‘Specifically Said argues that the way the West, Europe and the United States look at the countries and peoples of the Middle East is through a lens that distorts the actual reality of those places and those people’ (Ibid.). Said ‘calls this lens through which we view that part of the world ‘Orientalism’, a framework that we use to understand the unfamiliar and the strange’ Orient by Othering, making them different from ‘us’, the familiar (Ibid.).

Along this line, the image constructed by the West are not ‘natural’ facts about the Orient, but its Europe’s representation of the East, the strange and unfamiliar, as exotic and different from the West, the Occident, who is considered the normal and familiar one. Said argues that a kind of repertoire of the same kind of images of the Oriental world, more or less saying the same thing, kept

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9 coming up through centuries in Western art, literature, travel books, music, in the academics and in the media. These did not produce what you could call realistic representations of the Orient (Jhally, 2005: 4). Images of the East seen as a kind of mysterious place full of secrets and monsters and the sensual woman who is there to be subordinated by men are examples of these kind (Ibid.).

Moreover, Orientalism is not merely a description of the East, but through the construction of this image or knowledge and the considerable organized material investment, such as books, arts and scholarship, this discourse is materialized and made ‘true’ and considered as the ‘right’ way to talk about the Middle East (Said, 1978: 6). The combination of the construction and material investment gave this idea its strength and authority and reinforced the hierarchy of the West over East (Ibid.:20, 21). Therefore, Said sees ‘Orientalism as a Western style of dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’(Ibid.: 3). The Orient is in this way not a free subject of thought, but influenced by Western thought patterns. And, although the representations are not realistic and ‘true’, it has real implications. To conclude this, continued investment materialized in institutions, books, art etc., made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness’ (Ibid.: 6).

Said studies Orientalism not by just looking at individual writers or artists, but at the wider historical and institutional context wherein these texts and images are produced. ‘Specifically Said locates the construction of Orientalism within the history of Imperial conquest, whereby the British and the French have been the most important in terms of the East’ (Jhally, 2005: 5). They have the longest tradition with Orientalism and dominated the Orient till World War II (Said, 1978: 4). ‘They conquered not only militarily but also what we could call ideologically’ (Jhally, 2005: 5). ‘This process of using large abstract categories to explain people who look different, whose skin is a different color, has been going on for a long time, as far back as there has been contact between different cultures and peoples,’ but Orientalism makes this general process more formal in that it presents itself as objective knowledge’ (Ibid.).

From World War II, America took it over and used this discourse in the same way as his predecessors (Said, 1978: 4). The difference between Britain and France on the one hand and the United States on the other, is however, that Britain and France had colonies in the Orient. This direct colonial experience, gave them a kind of actual experiences of being in India for example, of ruling in a country for several hundred years (Jhally, 2005: 6). ‘In the case of Americans, the experience is much less direct, much more based on abstractions’. Because, there has never been an American occupation of the Near East (Ibid.).

Said argues, the second big thing that differs in the American experience is that the American Orientalism is very politicized by the conflict between Israel, for which America is the main ally, and

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10 Palestine. In this conflict Israel regards the whole Arab world as its enemy and sees all Arabs as terrorist and violent and irrational people and so forth, argues Said (Jhally, 2005: 6).

1.1.1 Discourse

In his theory about Orientalism, Said used Michael Foucault’s theory of ‘discourse’ and Antoni Gramsci’s idea of ‘hegemony’ to show how the West was able to create, produce and maintain the image of the Orient. Drawing on the work of Michael Foucault, Said viewed the writing on the Orient as a discourse, a system of a culturally dominant and acceptable way of thinking, speaking and writing about, or behave in relation to a social object or particular topic, which generates knowledge and truth (Ritzer, 2011: 607). But, in return, also limits and restricts other ways of talking, thinking and constructing knowledge about, or conducting ourselves in relation to, a particular topic (Hall, 1997: 44).

In the semiotics approach, representation was understood as the production of meaning through language. However, ‘in a culture, meaning often depends on larger units of analysis - narratives, statements, groups of images, whole discourses which operate across a variety of texts, areas of knowledge about a subject which have acquired widespread authority’ (Hall, 1997: 42). Therefore, for Foucault representation is a source for production of social knowledge and meaning through what he called discourse (rather than just language). He sees that as a system of representation, connected with social practices and relations of power (Ibid.: 42, 43).

‘Foucault does analyse particular texts and representations’. However, ‘he is more inclined to analyse all what is involved in representation, the whole discursive formation to which a text or a practice belongs’ (Hall, 1997: 51). ‘Discourse, Foucault argued, never consists of one statement, one text, one action or one source’ (Ibid.: 44). The same discourse, characteristic of the way of thinking or the state of knowledge at any one time, will appear across a range of texts, and as forms of conduct (doing), at a number of different institutional sites within society,’ what Foucault has called the discursive formation of that particular time (Ibid.).

Foucault ‘thought that, in each period, in a specific historical context, discourse produced particular forms of knowledge, rules, subjects and practices of knowledge, which differed radically from period to period’ and from culture to culture (Hall, 1997: 46). To explain this more clearly, I will take one example of the most important studies (madness, punishment and sexuality) done by Foucault to illustrate this. He saw mental illness not as an objective fact, which remained the same in all historical periods, and meant the same thing in all cultures. This means that it was only within a particular discursive formation that ‘madness’ could appear at all as a meaningful construct. It was constituted by all that was said about it, in statements about it, and the rules which prescribe certain

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11 ways of talking about it and exclude other ways (Ibid.: 45, 46). And it was only after a certain definition of ‘madness’ was put into practice in specific institutions (e.g. psychiatric hospitals) to regulate the behaviour of others, that the appropriate subject who personify this discourse – ‘‘the madman’ as current medical and psychiatric knowledge defined ‘him’ – could appear’ (Ibid.: 45, 46, 47).

Accordingly, this links to the social practice part, which Foucault connects to the production of social knowledge through discourse, which is active and not fixed in time. Then, for Orientalism, it was also only within a particular formation, in the time of Western expansion, that the Orient as the different Other could appear at all as a meaningful construct. And it is only after this produced ‘objective’ knowledge about the Orient is put into practice in art, music, books, scholarly and media text, that the Orient, which personifies this discourse, could appear.

Foucault’s theory of discourse ‘offered Said a means of describing the relationship between knowledge and power over the Orient’ (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 64). For Foucault, power and knowledge are not seen as independent entities, but are inextricably related, ‘because it is always being applied to the regulation of social conduct in practice (i.e. to particular ‘bodies’)’ (Hall, 1997: 47). ‘All political and social forms of thought, he believed, were inevitably caught up in the interplay of knowledge and power,’ which he has called the knowledge-power nexus (Ibid.). Foucault argued that not only is knowledge always a form of power, the power to say this is what we ‘believe’ in, assuming the authority of ‘the truth’ and thereby setting the norms. But power is implicated in the questions of whether and in what circumstances knowledge is to be applied or not. ‘This application and effectiveness of power/knowledge was more important, he thought, than the question of its ‘truth’’(Ibid.: 48, 49).

Because, knowledge linked to power, has more importantly the power to make itself ‘true’. All knowledge, once applied in the real world, has real effects, and in that sense at least, ‘becomes true’. It is not important if a certain knowledge is ‘true’, if it is not proven to be ‘true’, as long as everyone believes it is ‘the truth’, it will be effective and has real implications in the real world (Hall, 1997: 49). Therefore, Foucault argued that discourse can be very powerful on its own. For him, it is discourse, not the subject – the state, the ruling class or the king - which produces knowledge (Ibid.: 54). ‘Subjects may produce particular texts, but they are operating within the limits of the discursive formation of a particular period and culture’. This subject of discourse cannot work outside discourse, because it must submit to its rules and conventions (Ibid.: 55).

This led Foucault to speak of a discursive formation sustaining a particular regime of truth or the dominant regime of representation, as he explains as, the discourses which are made ‘true’ and therefore are the accepted ones, the accepted way of thinking and acting up on it in society (Hall, 1997: 49). Media as an arena for signifying practices is one of those important institutions within a

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12 discursive formation, ‘along with other social, economic, and political institutions which together work to structure dominant cultural belief systems that enable individuals to conceptualize and experience social reality’ (Fair, 1993: 13).

1.1.2 Hegemony

The concept of ‘hegemony’ from Antonio Gramsci provided, for Said, a way of explaining how the influence of certain ideas about the Orient prevailed over others (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 64). ‘Gramsci’s notion was that particular social groups struggle in many different ways, including ideologically, to win the consent of other groups and achieve a kind of ascendancy in both thought and practice over them’ (Hall, 1997: 48). This form of power Gramsci called hegemony, which is never permanent, according to him. So, the cultural leadership of particular ideas operate not through coercion or direct domination, but by consent: ‘a tacit, unwritten agreement often passed off as common sense’ (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 64, 65). Common sense are ideas which we take for granted. These ideas and images become so normal in our everyday life we do not think about and question them anymore, we have internalized them through socialisation.

Then, also certain cultural forms, like media, predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others (Said, 1978: 7). This is intrinsically linked to power, because who had the power to set the ideological agenda? The media have the power to set and dominate discourses, because they play an important role in constructing the world around us. Dominant ideas of society are being transported through media texts. Then, media are a vehicle to spread, confirm or contest ideological constructs. This make media institutions powerful players in constructing and sharing cultural value and believe systems. In chapter 3.1 the role of the media in shaping and helping to reproduce dominant discourses will be further discussed.

Due to historically articulated power relations between the West and East, the West are the ones in power to create an idea about the Orient, a discourse, which is passed on as the dominant one through cultural hegemony, which naturalized the image of the Orient, so we no longer question it anymore. This knowledge in turn let them maintain their power. It shows that cultural and political are not separated from each other, but are interconnected. The Orient is therefore in a way not a free subject of thought, because when people think of the Orient this dominant Western image of the Orient comes into play (Said, 1978: 3). Western media play an important factor in this, because they have up till now the cultural hegemony over knowledge production over the Orient (Fair, 1993: 12). Then, cultural hegemony gave Said, a way to explain how Orientalism could remain a powerful cultural and political force in the Western representation of the East (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 65).

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13 1.1.3 Othering

What I already pointed at earlier, was that Orientalism is a Western framework through which we come to understand the unfamiliar and the ‘strange’ by Othering, making them different from ‘us’, the familiar (Jhally, 2005: 2). This is why Orientalism is also called a discourse of Otherness, whereby the Other is set aside from the ‘normal’, the familiar. There are differences between groups of people, but power comes in when a group is being valued differently by another group. In this case, the Europeans and later the Americans decided that people from the Middle East are valued less than themselves, based on their different skin colour and cultural practices. The construction of this powerful and limited image or knowledge made itself ‘true’ through discourse and is up till now, at least in the West, considered as the ‘right’ way to talk about the Middle East. How the West use the marking of ‘difference’ to represent the Other, the Orient, and the essentializing of this ‘difference’ through stereotyping are addressed in this part.

To make sense of our world we give meaning to things, people and places by how we represent them – the words we use about them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, and the values we place on them (Hall, 1997: 3). Or in other words by categorisation and classification. This ‘marking of difference is, in semiotics, the basis of the symbolic order which we call culture’ (Hall, 1988: 330). However, when adjectives, usually based on highly visible characteristics, such as sex or race, are attributed to the category labels and these initial categories are freighted with ‘pictures’ and judgements, a category turns into a stereotype (Condor, 1988: 74). Then, stereotyping creates a general view of a group by attributing a set of characteristics to all members of that group, and thereby over-simplifying and essentializing the Other (Sorenson, 1993: 70). Thus, the purpose of stereotypes is not, like categories, to help one understand the world, but rather to point out differences and create hierarchies between groups and assign value to them (Harth, 2012 : 8). It ‘is all about bringing certain people or groups together and keeping others apart’ (Fair, 1993: 11).

By classification and categorisation binary oppositions are used to establish a clear difference between things in order to classify them (Hall, 1988: 330). However, ‘while we do not seem able to do without them, binary oppositions, like categories are also open to the charge of being reductionist and over-simplified’ (Ibid.: 329). ‘The philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued, that there are very few neutral binary oppositions. One pole of the binary, he argues, is usually the dominant one’ (Ibid.). So, the marking of ‘difference’ between groups with use of binary oppositions in discourse is always a relation of power - a product of historically articulated power relations - whereby the group doing the classification exerts its authority through the naming of characteristics upon which other groups are divided’ (Fair, 1993: 11). And whereby they place themselves higher in hierarchy than the group which is made different from them.

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14 Actually, to give ‘us’ a sense of our own identity, of who we are and with whom we ‘belong’, we have to made clear who the Other is and what makes him different from ‘us’. Then, to mark out and maintain identity within a group, othering, the marking of difference – making a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ - is used (Hall, 1997: 4). Moreover, to keep these categories ‘pure’ symbolic boundaries are needed, argues Mary Douglas. Then, ‘the marking of ‘difference’ leads us, symbolically, to close ranks, shore up culture and to stigmatize and expel anything which is defined as ‘impure’ or ‘abnormal’’ (Hall, 1988: 330).

This Othering is used by Europeans to make the distinction between the West and the East, whereby the Orient is seen as and made very different from the West by setting itself off against this Orient. This Othering creates the boundaries that define group identity, it decides who are included and who are not. It promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’).

Since antiquity the constructed idea about the Orient as the very different ‘exotic Other’ exists, created through European fantasy, by explorers, traders, missionary and scholars (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 67, 74). This ‘knowledge’ about the Orient was unchanging knowledge. It created a timeless Orient, an image outside of history, as if the Other has been that way forever and will remain that way; it is seen as an objective reality that can never change, which hides historical and socio-political context and nuance, argues Said (1978: 38).

The European encounter with the Orient strengthened this system of representing the Orient as different and unfamiliar (Said, 1978: 70). The colonial nations, Britain and France, re-used the Oriental discourse which was already there constructed by explorers among others, to rule over them, which makes it very effective (Ibid.: 36). The clear divide between ‘us’ Europeans and ‘them’ all Others, those non-Europeans was reinforced. To make this distinction stronger the Europeans homogenized and essentialized the Other by hiding the differences between them and exaggerating the differences between themselves and the Other and made the differences reductive and over-simplified. The Europeans saw themselves as superior to all non-European people and cultures, who were seen as a notion of backwardness (Bayoumi and Rubin, 2000: 73). Europeans were the ones who dominate and Orientals must be dominated, because they did not have it in them to know what was good for them (Said, 1978: 36, 37). In essence, they justified their colonial rule by Orientalism.

‘In addition, the Orient had helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’ (Said, 1978: 1,2). With the use of binary oppositions to strengthen the ‘difference’ between them the Orient is seen as ‘irrational’, ‘depraved (fallen)’, ‘childlike’, ‘different’, ‘strange’ and ‘unfamiliar’; thus the European is ‘rational’, ‘virtuous’, ‘mature’, ‘normal’, and ‘familiar’ (Ibid.: 40). They actually used this Othering to define their own identity (Ibid.: 12). In this

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15 way it has more to do with how the West see themselves; it is a mirror to the West, whereby the Orient is everything the West is not.

In this chapter I have showed that Said describes Orientalism as the dominant discourse about the Other invented by the Western world. He uses Foucault’s discourse and Gramsci’s hegemony to show how the West was able to create, produce and maintain the image of the Orient, and how the West through the process of Othering – making the unfamiliar different from the familiar - created a dichotomy between the West and the Orient. Where Said talks about ‘the invention of the Orient’ referring mostly to the Middle East, this theory, as a discourse of Otherness, can help to explain the dominant image of Africa in Western thinking as well. In the next chapter I will explain how this dominant image of Africa could arise.

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Chapter 2: The idea of Africa

In this chapter I will explain how the ‘idea’ of Africa as the different Other is invented and constructed by the Western world through time. In paragraph 2.1 will be discussed how the ‘Colonial Library’, the Western framework on Africa, has developed as part of the colonial encounter. In paragraph 2.1.1, 2.1.2, and 2.1.3 the three phases of the ‘Colonial Library’ will be described.

2.1 The Colonial Library

Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, an important Congolese philosopher and professor in African studies, has dealt with the image of Africa. In his work, The Invention of Africa and The idea of Africa, he studies the knowledge, the traditions of thought, which is produced about Africa. Mudimbe explores how the ‘idea’ of Africa as the different Other was invented and constructed by the Western world and has become a ‘given’ framed by the West.

This Western framework within Africa is studied, calls Mudimbe the ‘Colonial Library’. Matthews (2016: 1) explains the term as follows: ‘it refers to the body of texts and epistemological order which construct Africa as a symbol of otherness and inferiority’. In other words, it is the totality of knowledge and the immense system of representations about Africa that has over the centuries collectively invented by the Western world (Wai, 2015: 270). In his work, Mudimbe tries to demonstrate that the dominant knowledge about what we know about Africa is monopolized by Western thought. This ‘idea’ of Africa is a product of the West, an external conceptualization, an European construct which only gives room to a singular negative story on Africa. With the European encounter the story of a ‘primitive Africa’ with his ‘poor savage inhabitants’ was created (Mudimbe, 1994: 46, 213). In Mudimbe’s words:

any successful will to truth, converted into a dominating knowledge and actualized as an imperialist project, might transform itself into a will to “essentialist” prejudices, divisions, and destructions (Mudimbe, 1994: 213).

This Western lens is also named by scholars as the Afro-pessimism discourse, a discourse of Otherness, whereby Africa is constructed as the different and inferior Other. By the use of limited and stereotypical images within this discourse, African people are not only lumped together into a homogenous category, but the Other is also often represented ahistorically and in a binary relationship with the dominant hegemon, the West, argue Odemerho and Spells (2013: 172).

The Colonial Library as a framework is a problem according to Mudimbe, because it has set the boundaries of thinking about Africa, which makes it difficult to think across these lines.

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17 Knowledge about Africa, whether produced by Africans or non-Africans is, implicitly or explicitly, structured in Western thought where it emerged and thus is contaminated by the conceptualities of the library (Wai, 2015: 269). Since, the shape and framework of this dominant discourse are already determined by language and knowledge that originates in the West, it is difficult for Africans to define themselves (De Boeck, 2006: 2).

Mudimbe shows in his work how this ‘idea’ of Africa, the Colonial Library, has developed as part of the colonial encounter and how it is rooted in an attempt by the colonial power to assert themselves through creating an Other which can be unfavourably contrasted with themselves, the colonisers (Matthews, 2016: 3). The Europeans created a discourse of Otherness, whereby Africans were made inferior to the white race. With colonialism these constructs about Africa were implemented, however these ideas did not arise out of a sudden. The centuries of Western expansion before and after colonialism have all contributed to the image we have of Africa today. According to Mudimbe, ‘the hundreds of years of Africa’s unequal engagement with the West through the slave trade, colonial and post-colonial relations has produced a system of classification of people and societies, which has left Africa marginalized’ (Fair, 1993: 10).

Mudimbe distinguished broadly three different phases contributing to the invention of ‘primitive’ Africa and the construction of the Other (Mudimbe, 1988: 69). He insists that these different phases only mark different variations of the same discourse and complement each other through time (Ibid.: 72). I will explore these different phases using Mudimbe’s work complemented by other thinkers.

2.1.1 First phase: the exotic ‘Other’

Since the ancient time and before the colonial project took place, there were rich, varied and contradicted ideas about Africa in the European imaginary, explains Bassil (2011: 378). Africa was seen as a place of wonder, mystery, exotic beings and fantasy, but also as a place of monstrosity and danger (Ibid.: 383). With the first European encounter, in the form of explorers, navigators and travellers, increased ‘knowledge’ of the non-European world and his people (Ibid.: 382). This world and his people, as Wai describes, became the subject of European speculation and obsession (2015: 266). ‘So, little was known about Africa in the West that the Orientalist imagination went wild,’ state Mazrui (2005: 80). The European explorers barely spoke about the societies they purported to describe, but they constructed an image of them, a discourse of Otherness, which was true in the European imagination. The use of this discourse was possible due to the power of the Europeans to ‘invent the Other’ (Wai, 2015: 267).

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18 The exotic image of non-European people as savage, barbarian and primitive in travellers’ accounts, explorer’s reports and accounts of slave traders was widespread up to the seventeenth century, which marked the first phase in the conceptualization of Africa (Mudimbe, 1988: 72). An illustration of the common image at that time mentioned Okechukwu, comes from the great-great grandfather of the philosopher John Locke, who described ‘Negroes, [as] a people of beastly living, without a God, law, [and] religion’ (2014: 2, 3). Influenced by Evangelical paternalism, the idea that Africans were in need of help and the Europeans felt compelled to ‘save’ the African continent, began to grow (Bassil, 2011: 393). Europeans saw it as their religious duty and mission to convert the non-Christian Africans to ‘save’ them from their barbaric selves (Ibid.: 386).

During this phase the first steps to ‘the definition of the frontiers of the ‘West’ as the civilized ‘self’ and the ‘rest’ as its intimate but rejected other were initiated, under the guise of ‘discovery’ by European explorers’ (Wai, 2015: 271). This constructed ‘idea’ of Africa whereby Europeans saw themselves as superior to Africans, constitutes the foundations of the knowledge of the Colonial Library (Ibid.). ‘This library and its will to truth, linked to a European will to power, and its imperialistic mission, helped to justify and potentiate the violence of Atlantic slavery between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries,’ explains Wai (Ibid.). Based on the belief that African life was so ‘degraded’, increased intervention in the form of slavery was beneficial to the ‘savages’ and ‘sub-humans’ who inhabited the continent. So, slavery was seen as a necessary stage in the development of black Africans (Bassil, 2011: 390, 391).

2.1.2 Second phase: hierarchies of civilizations

In the eighteenth century the already existing discourse of the African Other, ‘complements by Enlightenment classifications of peoples and civilizations’ (Wai, 2015: 271). During this time, the production of a science of difference was encouraged by Enlightenment ideas of a hierarchy of civilizations (Ibid.: 272). ‘Cultural differences were viewed, not as absolute, but as temporary stages in a developmentalist narrative’ (Popke, 2001: 8). Every group of people goes through a stage of savagery followed by barbarism with as endpoint: civilization on the linear chain of civilizations (Ibid.). The African ‘was marginalized as her culture, beliefs and tradition was considered barbaric and ferocious, while her people termed savages, untutored, unintelligent and irrational,’ which placed them lower in rank than the ‘rich’ culture of the European man (Okechukwu, 2014: 1, 2).

Add to this, the belief that Africa did not exist before the explorer arrived - Africans lived in isolation before that time - which left the idea that they had no history. In the European mind they were the ones who discovered and invented this shrouded continent and brought civilization

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19 (Okechukwu, 2014: 1). What this reveals, according to Bassil is, ‘a [already] deep sense of cultural superiority and prejudice towards black African culture and black Africans’ (2011: 388).

2.1.3 Third phase: colonialism

From the created hierarchy based on culture in the previous century, now in the nineteenth century, parallel to this idea was Social Darwinism, the evolution of species. According to this theory, human groups and races are subject to the laws of natural selection, which resulted in an order among the human species. It helped ‘explain the superiority of Europeans as a result of biological and cultural achievement’ and made Africans ‘natural’ inferior (Mudimbe, 1988: 69). Those at the bottom of the evolution ladder were primitive, childlike and uncivilized, and in dear need of evolution which was to be brought by the already evolved, the European thinking man (Okechukwu, 2014: 1). First Africans were seen as inferior due to their culture and now biology made the ‘scientifically proven’ divide between human groups even greater.

‘With this mindset, the field of anthropology was founded to “discover” the “Other”’ (Okechukwu, 2014: 3; Wai, 2015: 270). ‘Various schools of anthropology developed models and techniques to describe the “primitive”’, whereby they looked at Africa through their own western lens, from their own worldview (Mudimbe, 1988: 69; Okechukwu, 2014: 3). According to Bunzl (2002), this ethnocentric worldview placed the Other in a different time that is lesser or earlier stage on the temporal scale of an evolutionary trajectory than that of the anthropologist who produced the ‘knowledge’ (cited in Wai, 2015: 271). In this way anthropologists provided the intellectual and ideological framework for colonial occupation in the nineteenth and twentieth century (Wai, 2015: 272).

All the previous developments strengthened the idea of Africans as inferior and in need of direct European invention. With colonisation, the colonisers could successfully re-use these already created ideas about Africa as the different Other to justify their colonial rule (Bassil, 2011: 378). The dichotomy between ‘us’, the familiar and superior, and ‘them’, the strange and inferior Other, which was conscious created over the centuries was now implemented in the colonies (Mudimbe, 1988: 69). The dichotomy separated Europeans from Africans by creating artificial categories and enhancing cultural differences. Moreover, they homogenized the Other to make the distinction between themselves and the Other greater and easier to maintain (Harth, 2012: 19, 20).

The Europeans made skin colour the most important marker of difference between themselves and the different Other, the African (Mazrui, 2005: 69). ‘The overall result was to make people race conscious and entrench general notions of African inferiority based on physical characteristics,’ like their black skin (Harth, 2012: 32). They used racism to make themselves superior to Africans to

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20 preserve white ruling power. The hierarchy of the human species by Social Darwinism made this divide ‘scientifically’ proven and made it easier to classify Africans and their cultural practises as inferior. Their white superiority gave them the impetus to invade, oppress, use and subjugate the ‘wild’ black African man by all possible means. Colonization, they say, brought a group of people without a society, without a history to become one, and also brought them to the light of civilization (Okechukwu, 2014: 1).

So, we have seen how this ‘idea’ of Africa, based on the Colonial Library, developed over centuries as part of the colonial encounter and how the West created a dichotomy between themselves and the African by subjugating and oppressing the Other (Okechukwu, 2014: 8). To sum up: explorers invented the exotic Other and described them as barbaric and savage, under influence of Evangelistic paternalism the belief was that the missionaries were bringing the ‘right’ religion (Africans needed help), slavery was needed to bring ‘development’ to Africa, Enlightenment ideas of an hierarchy of civilizations constructed Africans as culturally inferior and Social Darwinism as biologically inferior, anthropology provided the intellectual and ideological framework for conquest and with colonialism the colonisers re-used the already created image as justification for their colonial rule and made skin colour the most important marker of difference. The knowledge capital of the Colonial Library not only served to justify colonialism but also Atlantic slavery (Wai, 2015: 270).

Even after the colonies gained independence this created ‘idea’ of Africa remains institutionalised and moreover stays an important component of modern conceptualisations of the world, declared Said (Bassil, 2011: 378). This is because the ‘idea’ of Africa, the Colonial Library or Afro-pessimism is constantly re-used during centuries up to now. Therefore, it is difficult to confront and eradicate this negative image that have become ingrained in Western thought. This also influence how Western media portray and represent Africa and Africans, because they are also influenced by these ideas, and re-use these discourse of Otherness about Africa. To understand which role Western media play in the representation of Africa, in the next chapter will be discussed first what the role of Western media is in representing news, and how they construct news items.

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Chapter 3: The role of Western media

In this chapter I will explain the role of Western media in constructing and representing news. In paragraph 3.1 will be described how news items are produced/constructed by media. Paragraph 3.2 discusses the concept of ‘framing’. In paragraph 3.3 will be elaborated the important role of Western media in the production of international news and representing Others in predefined ways.

3.1 Representation of news

Media, as storytellers, play an important cultural role, by providing audiences with stories of what happens in society and in the world. Hereby media do not mirror reality, but they represent reality. To represent something, according to Hall, ‘is to describe or depict it, to call it up in the mind by description or portrayal or imagination’ (1997: 16). This means that we as human beings give meaning to the material world, to objects, people, places or events. Journalists are not different from that. They use representational systems to construct meaning about the world and communicate this to their audiences. Therefore, media images and events are not reflecting reality, but are constructed ‘realities’ (Fürsich, 2010: 115). News, then, is not founded, is not merely a collection of facts put together in narrative form, but news items are constructed by media and are given a certain meaning (Fair, 1993: 7). However, ‘journalists often call their news product “objective news stories,” but like any story or narrative form, news stories are deeply rooted in the society from which they come’ (Ibid.: 9).

In telling a ‘story’, the news media retell and reinterpret versions of that particular story or in other words draw upon and repackage discourses from other powerful social and political institutions. In this way all social, economic, and political institutions work together to structure the dominant discourses, the cultural belief systems that enable individuals to conceptualize and experience social reality (Fair, 1993: 7, 13). The media [consciously or unconsciously] thus help to reproduce [at least partly] certain dominant notions of reality, or in other words certain dominant ideas which exists in society (Ibid.: 7). This is due to that media as a social institution is influenced by the dominant discourses in society, and along with all other institutions form what we have seen a particular discursive formation sustaining a particular regime of truth, the discourses which are made ‘true’ and therefore are the accepted ones, the accepted and dominant way of thinking and acting up on it in society (Hall, 1997: 44). We have seen that in this way discourses set boundaries of the domain within a particular topic can be discussed. Media, by this means, naturalize these boundaries set by discourse as the only ones possible or the only ones that are ‘real’ (Fair, 1993: 13).

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22 Media are influenced and draw upon these dominant discourses or frameworks in society although they may not be aware of that, because they internalize these ideas; it becomes normal, common sense, to them (Hall, 1988: 68). Add to this the structures of the media outlet, the organizational routines where journalists are bound to. It is clear, then, that this has real consequences for the news texts media produce. ‘The values and routines that go into producing news stories represent cultural conventions, rules, and codes that serve to construct boundaries of meaning’ (Fair, 1993: 9). Then, by choosing certain events, emphasizing certain ‘facts’, giving stories a certain tone and using certain words, the news media structure and define reality (Ibid.: 13).

3.1.1 Framing

Fürsich states that ‘Media [as important storytellers] play a strong role in defining and shaping topics of public debate’ and in this way play a role in how audiences understand an issue of public concern (2010: 115). They do this by news selection, whereby news outlets decide which events become news and how these events are covered. This leads to the idea that ‘media not only tell us “what to think about”, but also “what to think”’ about the topic (Pan and Kosicki, 1993: 70).

This is named by various scholars as framing, which is a broad concept often used in media research, but applied in a variety of ways. Hardin & Whiteside note that ‘the term framing can generally be understood as the process in which a “point of view” on a given issue or event is used to interpret and present “reality” – magnifying or shrinking aspects of that issue or event to make it more or less salient’ (cited in D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2009: 313). To make this point clear, media discuss issues and news events in particular ways and highlight certain aspects as prominent, make it more noticeable, which means that frames simultaneously direct attention away from other aspects, whereby they guide the audience in a particular direction, into a preferred position of knowledge (Entman, 1993: 54; Hall, 1988: 71). Or in other words they prime the audience to think about a topic in a certain way. This means that different messages can be communicated about the same event by highlighting different aspects, using different frames. As noted by Van Gorp: ‘the meaning of the issue changes fundamentally according to the chosen frame’ (cited in D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2009: 86).

A frame highlights different functions. A particular frame can for example define a problem, can say something about the cause of a problem, convey moral judgment, and can give solutions to a problem. In Entman’s words: ‘to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation’ (1993: 52). Framing scholars suggest that in news texts, frames are demonstrated in the choice of topics covered, the use of sources, language, and photographs (Hardin & Whiteside cited in D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2009: 313).

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23 How journalists frame and give meaning to events depends on how they label, classify and interpretate what happens around them (Camaj, 2010: 636, 637). By communicating this to their audience ‘journalists, but also editors and other media workers involved in the news production sort and sift through all incoming information deciding what becomes news’ (Fair, 1993: 8). They ‘make conscious or unconscious framing judgements in deciding what to say, guided by the for them ‘understandable’ frames that organize their belief systems’ and ‘package it in familiar and easy to process frames for their audience’ (Entman, 1993: 52; Camaj, 2010: 637). Yet, using Foucault, audience members also belong to the same discursive formation which makes it likely that they do understand it in kind of the same way. Also noted by Van Gorp, media use culturally embedded frames, as he names it, ‘because such frames make an appeal to ideas the receiver is already familiar with, their use appears to be natural to those who are members of a particular culture or society’ (cited in D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2009: 87). ‘Journalists, along with their sources and audiences, draw upon the stock of frames that culture provides to them’, continues Van Gorp (Ibid.: 88).

Each culture has a limited set of commonly used frames that are institutionalized in various ways. Then, for certain topics, events, places and people the same ‘understandable’ frames are used, and therefore get recurrently signified in particular same ways resulting in news products using the same frames. In this way, particular meanings are privileged over other many potential meanings, which is the work of power in the representational practice, argues Hall (1997: 325). This is powerful, because these particular communicated versions of reality are the basis for the meaning assigned to events, identity, and other culturally significant topics. (Hardin & Whiteside cited in D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2009: 313). Therefore, drawing from hegemony theory, frames can be seen as ‘imprints of power’ (Carragee & Roef, cited in D’Angelo and Kuypers, 2009: 314). Therefore, the question we always have to ask ourselves by receiving a news text, according to Hall, is which of the many meanings in the produced text, written or visual, does the media mean to privilege? Which is the preferred meaning? (1997: 325, 326).

When media are unaware of their standard ‘understandable’ frames, influenced by the existing dominant discourses in society, this can lead to misrepresentation, telling only one side of the story or leaving out the perspective of the ones who are represented and worse to the reproduction of negative discourses consisting of unacknowledged stereotypes and negative representations.

3.1.2 International ‘Others’

Western media play an important role in the production of international news coverage and in particularly, the shaping of events that may not be personally experienced (Fair, 1993: 5). They are central to which international events become news and how they are framed and when it comes to the

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24 representation of ‘Others’ use often predefined ways, argues Fürsich (2010: 121). ‘At times, representations may leave out whole populations simply by ignoring them or their viewpoints’ (Ibid.). Or if these groups, countries or continents are mentioned they are misrepresented, telling only one side of the story or tell from their own ethnocentric perspective by leaving out the point of view of the ones who are represented (Harth, 2012: 35). This has to do with what is considered ‘newsworthy’.

Which countries, groups and continents Western media consider ‘newsworthy’ depends on different factors or selecting criteria. Researchers concerned with the process by which news is selected by media organizations found that the amount of coverage that a country or region would receive in the media of another country depends upon its cultural, economic, geographic, and political proximity or ties with the country of were the particular media organization is based. ‘Countries, with few or weak ties, may receive little coverage, though events or developments occurring there may be of importance’ (Fair, 1993: 7, 8). Or to put it differently, media outlets prefer stories that are close to their own and their audiences perceived cultural, economic and political background. Gans called this ethnocentrism, choosing and reporting an event from your own point of view, through your own lens (Fürsich, 2010: 117).

This proximity combined with two other selecting criteria, a preference for stories of elite nations or the core countries, which are considered the Western countries that contain most of the wealth of the planet, and a focus on exceptions, conflict and crisis, like violence, corruption and natural disasters, makes for a very limited international news selection by Western media (Fürsich, 2010: 117; De Beer, 2010: 596). Therefore, cite De Beer, ‘not all countries are created equal when it comes to news coverage’. The periphery, the ‘less developed’ countries of the world or the developing world are underrepresented and the stories covered are mostly ‘negative’ in Western media (De Beer, 2010: 596, 597).

And at times the events that are covered are misrepresented by Western media by making use of limited or stereotypical images and exaggeration which has been noted and explained by a number of scholars. For example, Moeller (1999) explains that international media over-dramatize events from distant places, presented the events as either black or white, good or bad, sensationalize them by the use of exaggerated language and graphic images, and referencing certain metaphors, and using imagery that resonates with their local audiences (cited in Zhang and Matingwina, 2016: 20). While, Moore (2013) states that the media only conform to the expectations of their readers (cited in Zhang and Matingwina, 2016: 31). Then, Zhang and Matingwina, combine these two statements and argue ‘that the media shape the diet of their audiences by first exaggerating events and then using stereotypes which influence audience expectations’ (2016: 31). Fürsich add to this, that Western media when covering events of the developing world make use of representations which ‘essentialise Others as “exotic”, or even worse, as abnormal and even deviant’ (2010: 121). Thereby, ‘sweeping

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25 generalizations are often made in an attempt to explain an issue,’ whereby the media makes use of catch words and phrases such as corruption (Harth, 2012 : 36). Harth argues, that Western media tend to decontextualize the news, focusing mainly on what instead of why something is happening without outlining the context (Ibid.: 36, 37). This all leads according to Fürsich, to an image of ‘the developing world as chaotic beyond relief and in constant need of support by the West’ (2010: 117).

This way of selecting and framing international news is influenced by the historical baggage, the prejudicial and stereotypical images of Europe’s Others, which persevere in our minds and in that of journalists (Popke, 2001: 8). And how the news comes out, which story is told, has real implications in the real world.

In this chapter I have showed the important role of Western media in representing news. Media images are not reflecting reality, but are constructed. Media frame issues and news events in particular ways, whereby they highlight certain aspects as prominent. By doing so, they guide the audience in a particular direction and prime to think about a topic in a certain way. News media are influenced by the dominant discourses of the society their live in.

In the production of international news Western media play a powerful role. They represent the Others in predefined ways, leaving out the point of view of the ones who are represented, and make use of stereotypes. In the next chapter I will explain the role of Western media in reproducing the dominant discourse on Africa, the Afro-pessimism discourse, in Western media coverage.

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Chapter 4: Afro-pessimism in Western media

In the chapter about the roots of Afro-pessimism discourse, we have seen how the knowledge and image of the African continent developed over centuries. In the previous chapter about the role of Western media, I have showed how Western media may help to reproduce certain dominant ideas in society. In this chapter, I will link this two together to show what the role of Western media is in reproducing the dominant discourse on Africa, the Afro-pessimism discourse, in Western news coverage. In paragraph 4.1 will be explained how Africa is reported in 21st century in Western media. In the sub paragraphs of 4.1 the general aspects and journalistic practices of Afro-pessimism discourse will be discussed. Paragraph 4.2 explains the dominant ‘stereotypical’ images of Africa in Western media.

4.1 Africa’s media image in the 21st

century

‘The way Africa is reported in Western news media and the image of Africa that has been emerged from the reportage of Africa have remained a touchy topic of discussion among African scholars and political leaders’. According to Obijiofor, in the 21st

century, nothing much has changed in the way the Western media portrays Africa compared to the time of colonisation (2009: 38, 39). Nothias, concur, stating that ‘contemporary Western media representations of Africa are still shaped by colonial ideas, exoticism, feelings of white superiority and, ultimately, racism’ (2018: 1139). Western media’s fascination for negative news has remained as intense as in the past, adds Obijiofor (2009: 39). Zhang and Matingwina, concur, stating that ‘Western media have dominated the production and distribution of international news in Africa, with a number of studies exposing their focus on conflict and other stereotypes to depict the people and events in the 54 African countries (2016: 20). Therefore, Western media fail to offer a balanced representation of Africa (Nothias, 2018: 1139). While, Bleasdale insists that journalists covering Africa have a responsibility to report good and bad news (2004: 14).

A vast literature in media and communication studies supports the claim that the image of Africa portrayed by Western media serve to create a particular media discourse about Africa, holding misrepresentations and stereotypes. I will use this literature to discuss how Africa is framed by giving the main characteristics of Afro-pessimism in Western media coverage.

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27 4.1.1. Selectivity

One of the main characteristics is that news coverage of Africa in Western media is highly selective. According to Nothias, this selectivity of the coverage of Africa has two key aspects: underrepresentation and misrepresentation (2012: 2).

The first one is underrepresentation. Various studies show that Africa is under-represented in Western media coverage. Golan investigated coverage of African nations by four US television newscasts between 2002 and 2004. He found that the African continent received limited coverage and that the majority of Africans nations were not viewed as newsworthy by the US television networks (2008: 50). More recently, Wilke, Heimprecht, and Cohen (2012), analysed the content of foreign coverage of television news during four weeks early in 2008 across 17 countries from five regions. When we focus on the results of North America and six European countries included in the study, the coverage of Africa is 6 percent of foreign news coverage in North America and 4 percent in the European countries. Overall, their study shows that Africa (3 percent) is the least covered continent along with Australia/Oceania (3 percent), South America 9 percent, the Middle East having 18 percent, Asia 19 percent, North America 23 percent and Europe having 40 percent. The data illustrates the still subordinate role of Sub-Saharan Africa, according to Wilke et al. (2012: 309, 319).

If Africa is the most neglected continent in foreign news coverage is not clear. De Beer investigated the coverage of UK, US and German television news over the year 2008. He found that while Africa (10.8 percent) received less coverage than Asia (25.5 percent), the Middle East (22 percent) and North America (21.4 percent), it nonetheless ‘received substantially more coverage than South America (1.9 percent)’ (2010: 603). Whether Africa is the most neglected continent in Western news coverage or not, the existing studies show that it has been one of the least covered.

This has to do with the selection process inherent to news production. International events become news based on certain selection criteria as I have shown in paragraph 3.1.2. Two of the selecting criteria are a focus on elite nations and proximity or ties with the country the media organization is based in. When taking the first selecting criteria into account, the continent Africa is categorised as belonging to the developing world, the periphery, and not to the centre, the elite nations which dominate the means of production in the world (Nothias, 2012: 56). Relating to the second selecting criteria, proximity, African culture is not perceived by Western media as close to their own and their audiences perceived cultural background. This is affirmed by the Afro-pessimism discourse, which construct Africa as a symbol of Otherness and inferiority, and thus as the opposite of Western culture (Matthews, 2016: 1). Due to both criteria ‘Africa is not considered a significant international newsmaker’ (Harth, 2012: 62). And therefore not perceived by journalists and editors as newsworthy when compared to other countries or regions which have stronger ties with the West (Fair, 1993: 8).

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28 The second key aspect of selectivity in the literature is misrepresentation. The claim is that the coverage focuses almost exclusively on ‘negative stories’ and follows a ‘crisis-driven’ news agenda (Nothias, 2018: 1142). Fair, for example, found that ‘when the media do cover African countries, stories often conceive of Africa in a very narrow focus’. She argues that ‘good news’ about Africa does not fit Western media’s conceptions about Africa. ‘For African countries to be part of the news, it seems that news stories on Africa must include three elements: events, crisis, and conflict,’ claims Fair (1993: 7). Schraeder and Endless (1998: 32, 33), for their part, found that 73 percent of the articles published in the New York Times between 1955 and 1995 provided ‘negative’ images of African politics and society, and that there had been an increase in ‘negative’ news, from 67 percent in 1955 to 85 percent in 1995. Looking at The New York Times and The Washington Post coverage of Africa between March and mid-August 2000, The TransAfrica forum (2000: 4) found that out of 89 stories 84% were ‘negative’. Golan (2008, 53), for his part, found that ‘the majority of stories about African nations focused on negative and highly deviant issues such as conflict and disasters both natural and human caused’. More recently, De Beer (2010: 597) shows that of the developing world, ‘especially Africa suffers under the “bad news syndrome” of international media coverage’. Harth (2012: 62) also found that the overwhelming news content of Africa is ‘negative’ with a focus on exceptions and conflict, which portray the continent in constant crisis and failure. These various studies seem to support the widespread claim in the literature that ‘some overselection of negative news from Africa does seem to occur’ (Zein and Cooper, 1992: 137). Obijiofor adds that there are also positive news worthy of media coverage but which are in general overlooked (2009: 46).

However, there are limits to analysing Africa’s coverage solely on the basis of negativity. Firstly, ‘negativity’ is a quite subjective criterion, argues Okechukwu (2014: 2). What ‘negative’ is, is hard to define, because it is open to interpretation. Secondly, ‘the idea of news more generally is crossed by a negativity bias’ (Nothias, 2018: 1142). So, Africa is then in this way not an exception. Thirdly, and according to Nothias more important is an exclusive focus on ‘negativity’ misses the core features of the criticism of media representations of Africa in the literature, namely the language, images, rhetoric and narratives used. Numerous studies have argued that Western media rely on a specific set of vocabulary, metaphors and explanatory frameworks when reporting on Africa, and that these contribute to the creation and continuation of the ‘idea’ of Africa grounded in colonial and Afro-pessimism discourse (Ibid.: 1143).

4.1.2 Homogenous entity

Another critique is that Africa is portrayed as an homogeneous entity. This is the idea that Africa is often referred to and presented as if it were one large country, rather than a continent over 50 independent countries. This is, according to Michira, ‘a misconception that ignores the fact that Africa

News from the African perspective,