Paper short abstract:

Drawing on content analysis of online news and interviews with journalists, this paper assesses the extent to which global media portray a diverse range of perspectives about French, US, and Chinese foreign interventions in Africa, and explore the key influences shaping those media narratives.

Paper long abstract:

News reporting of foreign interventions in Africa has largely positioned the continent as exploitable and unable to develop independently of external powers. Contemporary commercial and military interactions between African countries and powers like the US, France, and China are variously depicted as neo-imperialism bringing little benefit, or as welcome 'partnership' under African control. This paper explores the dynamics of this dichotomous discourse about African autonomy in the face of ongoing foreign interventions: to what extent do global media portray a diverse range of perspectives about French, US, and Chinese foreign interventions on the African continent, and what are the key influences on the narratives provided? We provide results from a comparative content analysis of two years (2015-2016) of coverage of those involvements in Africa in a selection of international online news sources (Al Jazeera, BBC, CCTV, CNN, France 24). We compare the perspectives that are given prominence, ignored or diminished in global media by analysing the thematic and geographical framing of the articles, their tones, the voices in the coverage, how often the legitimacy of foreign powers are questioned, and the extent to which the coverage reproduces tropes of Africa Rising or social disorder. We also draw on 15 interviews with journalists working for international media in Kenya and South Africa to shed light on influences shaping coverage. By combining the examination of media content and production, we aim to capture the dynamics behind the production of - and struggle over - international representations of foreign interventions in Africa.

Paper short abstract:

Al Jazeera is rarely considered alongside other state-funded broadcasters making in-roads into Africa. Yet its claim to offer a 'voice for the voiceless' from 'the Global South' functions as a form of strategic role-taking for Qatar, which has important implications for sub-Saharan countries.

Paper long abstract:

Recent research and grey literature on state-funded international media in sub-Saharan Africa has tended to focus on the diplomatic purposes underlying the rapid expansion of Chinese state media and/or BBC World Service. Al Jazeera English, which is funded by the Qatari government, rarely comes in for the same kind of scrutiny.

Yet the business press has widely reported on the charm offensive undertaken by the Emir of Qatar in sub-Saharan countries, most notably Reuters newswire, from which the title of this piece was taken. Specifically, the Emir is reported to be seeking new markets and trying to diversify Qatar's economy, following the damaging blockade of the country by its Gulf neighbours. He's undertaken far more African tours than his predecessors, including a 6 country diplomatic trip in late 2018. This complements a longer-term form of national role-taking, in which Qatar has positioned itself as a peacemaker, mediating between Eritrea and Djibouti over a boundary dispute, and facilitating the peace process in Sudan over Darfur, which led to the Doha agreement in 2011.

But how might Qatar's diplomatic activity relate to its funding of the Al Jazeera network? The question has gone unnoticed by most media critics, despite the explicit positioning of Al Jazeera English in particular as a 'voice for the voiceless', reporting the 'Global South' from 'the Global South'. This paper seeks to explore those questions in relation to 3 year global project on humanitarian reporting, which included detailed discussions with journalists at the channel's Nairobi bureau about how state funding shapes their work.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore the interactions between Kenyan journalists and Chinese state actors under China-African media cooperation, which is alleged as China's cultural imperialism. It focuses on those connections and disruptions of China entering the local media field.

Paper long abstract:

Kenya is the node of China's Belt and Road Initiative in Africa and the hub of Chinese media engagements with the continent. With China's expanding interests in Africa, Beijing launched China-African media cooperation programs persuading African media to speak against Western criticisms and to manufacture a favourable public opinion for Chinese investments. There are concerns that this cooperation is Chinese cultural imperialism, whereas previous studies question if China would have space in those African countries whose media industry applies a western liberal-democratic paradigm and journalists are western-minded. It seems that when it comes to foreign powers- either China or the West, African media is often assumed as a simple-minded victim with neither agency nor creativity.

This ethnographic study examines the media interactions between Chinese state actors, Kenyan political forces, and Daily Nation, the largest private press in Kenya and a significant media partner of China, regarding the controversial Chinese-build Standard Gauge Railway. It shows communication barriers and mutual mistrust between China and Daily Nation under the media cooperation. Whereas Chinese actors complain local press is "biased" and carries no responsibility for Kenya's development owing to the influence of the West, local journalists insist they are just playing a watchdog role.

This paper argues that the local press has gone beyond the watchdog role; its journalistic practice shows multiple forms of cynicism with which the local press maintains scepticism towards Kenyan politicians and Chinese actors and stays hostile to their interferences; meanwhile, it can also cooperate with those forces.

Paper short abstract:

This research studies the mutual representations of DR Congo and Belgium in each other's printed press today (2017), thereby looking at the range of discourses present, and if and where 'colonial continuities' (Toussaint 2016:18) are at stake.

Paper long abstract:

Much research already studied the Western media representations of 'Africa', mostly stating that colonial discourses are still present (Toussaint 2016). But as Scott (2015) showed, these generalizing conclusions of Afro-pessimism need to be carefully revisited. On the other hand, views of the African countries on 'the West' and issues of Occidentalism are almost completely neglected (Buruma & Margalit 2005; Mohmoh 2003). Acknowledging the historic colonial bonds between states, this research studies the range of contemporary representations of Belgium in the Congolese printed press and vice versa, thus taking into account a mutual perspective from both countries.

Drawing on a large-scale comparative content analysis, we trace which discourses are present in the media of an ex-colonizer and an ex-colony. We selected six Belgian, from which three Dutch-language and three French-language newspapers and three Congolese newspapers. We focus on news coverage from 2017, which was marked by a flux in the relations between DR Congo and Belgium. This was illustrated by amongst others postponed elections in DR Congo, the suspension of military cooperation between the two countries, the opening of a new Belgian embassy in Kinshasa and debates on decolonisation in Belgium. We identified exemplary cases, using the sampling method of Critical Discourse Moments (Carvalho 2004: 166). The paper presents the results of a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of text and images (Fairclough 1995; Machin & Mayr 2012), contextualized by a descriptive quantitative content analysis, thereby looking precisely where 'colonial continuities' are at stake (Toussaint 2016: 18).