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Deriving from innovative new work by six researchers, this book questions what the new media's role is in contemporary Africa. The chapters are diverse - covering different areas of sociality in different countries - but they unite in their methodological and analytical foundation. The focus is on media-related practices, which require engagement with different perspectives and concerns while situating these in a wider analytical context. The contributions to this collection provide fresh ethnographic descriptions of how new media practices can affect socialities in significant but unpredictable ways.
“This is a fascinating set of ethnographic and empirically based studies with an excellently penned Introduction.” • Keyan Tomaselli, University of Johannesburg
Jo Helle-Valle is a social anthropologist and Professor in the Development Studies Department at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has published in journals such as Journal of African Media Studies, Africa, Ethnos, History and Anthropology, and New Media & Society.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Social Science Perspective on Media Practices in Africa: Social Mechanisms, Dynamics and Processes
Jo Helle-Valle and Ardis Storm-Mathisen
Part I: Economy
Chapter 1. Digital Development Imaginaries, Informal Business Practices and the Platformisation of Digital Technology in Zambia
Wendy Willems
Chapter 2. Botswana’s Digital Revolution: What’s in it?
Ardis Storm-Mathisen and Jo Helle-Valle
Part II: Gender and Social Relations
Chapter 3. Bolingo ya face: Digital Marriages, Playfulness and the Search for Change in Kinshasa
Katrien Pype
Chapter 4. Texting Like A State: Knowledge and Change in a National mHealth Programme
Nanna Schneidermann
Chapter 5. New Ways of Making Ends Meet? On Batswana Women, Their Uses of the Mobile Phone and Connections through Education
Ardis Storm-Mathisen
Part III: Localities and New Media
Chapter 6. The Public Inside Out: Facebook, Community and Banal Activism in a Cape Town Suburb
Nanna Schneidermann
Chapter 7. From No Media to All Media: Domesticating New Media in a Kalahari Village
Jo Helle-Valle
Afterword: The Electronic Media in Africa, with an Addendum from Mauritius
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Index