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).