Rethinking Media Policy in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa:The Challenge of Community Media

© Media Watch 8 (2) 270-286, 2017
ISSN 0976-0911 e-ISSN 2249-8818
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2017/v8i2/49013
 

Rethinking Media Policy in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa: The Challenge of Community Media

PATRICK EDEM OKON
Covenant University, Nigeria
 
Abstract
This article draws on the challenges confronting community media in South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria to propose a ‘rethink’ in media policy conception and the political processes for policy-making. It suggests an ‘ethical-political’ policy model as best suited to the contribution of community media towards sophistication in media policy discourse in the twenty-first century. The article locates community media within the conceptual framework of ‘alternative journalism’ and the scholarly debates about ‘shapers’ of media policy decisions. The empirical data are drawn from oral interviews conducted between 2011 and 2014. The study concludes, firstly, that African governments and media regulators need to quickly redress the pressures on community media to improve their effectiveness as policy activists. Secondly, the challenge of community media to media policy requires a revision of the conceptual, social, and political frameworks for media policy-making along the ‘ethical-political’ logic to make them more integrative and sophisticated. And thirdly, the contribution of community media requires greater public and academic acknowledgement. These issues are considered from the sociological and philosophical perspectives and only in relation to community press and broadcasting media.
 
Keywords: Community media, alternative journalism, activism, rethinking, media policy, access, and Participation
 
References
 
Atton, C. (2010), ‘Alternative Journalism: Ideology and Practice’, In S. Allan (ed.), The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism, New York, NY: Routledge, 169-78
Atton, C. and Hamilton, J. (2008), Alternative Journalism [Journalism Studies: Key Texts], Los Angeles: SAGE
Baran, S. and Davis, D. (2000), Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future, Second Edition, Australia: Wadsworth
Carter, C. and Allan, S. (2000), ‘If it bleeds, it leads: ethical questions about popular journalism’, In D. Berry, Ethics and Media Culture: Practices and Representations, Oxford: Focal, 132-53
Couldry, N. & Curran, J. (2003), ‘The Paradox of Media Power’, In Nick Couldry and James Curran (eds.), Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World, Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield, 3-15
Couldry, N. (1999), ‘Disrupting the Media Frame at Greenham Common: A New Chapter in the History of Mediations?, In Media, Culture and Society 21: 3, 337-58
Curran, J. and Park, M. (2000), De-Westernizing Media Studies, London: Routledge
Dahlgren, P. (1991), ‘Introduction’, In P. Dahlgren and C. Sparks (eds.), Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media Age, London: Routledge, 1-24
Duff, A. (2010), ‘The Age of Access? Information Policy and Social Progress’, In In S. Papathanassopoulos and R. Negrine (eds.), Communications Policy: Theories and Issues, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 49-64
Feintuck, M. and Varney, M. (2006), Media Regulation, Public Interest and the Law, Second Edition, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Freedman, D. (2008), The Politics of Media Policy, Cambridge, UK: Polity
Fuchs, C & Sandoval, M. (2015), ‘The Political Economy of Capitalist and Alternative Social Media’, In Chris Atton (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media, London & New York: Routledge, 165-175
Glissant, É. (1997), Poetics of Relations (trans. Betsy Wing), Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press
Habermas, J. (1962), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (trans. Thomas Burger), Cambridge: Polity Press
Hackett, R. and Carroll, W. (2006), Remaking Media: The struggle to democratize public communication, New York: Routledge
Hallin, D. and Mancini, P. (2004), Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hamel, J., Dufour, S., & Fortin, D. (1993), Case Study Methods, Qualitative Research Methods Volume 32, Newbury Park, London & New Delhi: SAGE
Hamilton, J. (2000), ‘Alternative Media: Conceptual Difficulties, Critical Possibilities’, In Journal of Communication Inquiry 24: 4, 357-7
Hartley, J. (2004), ‘Democratainment’, In Robert C. Allen & Annette Hill (eds.), The Television Studies Reader, London & New York: Routledge, 524-533
Hume, D. (2000 Reprint), A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), David and Mary Norton (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press
Humphreys, P. (1994), Media and Media Policy in Germany: The Press and Broadcasting since 1945, Second Edition, Oxford: Berg
Hutchison, D. (1999), Media Policy: An Introduction, Oxford, UK: Blackwell
Kant, I. (1985), Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (trans. James W. Ellington), Indianapolis: Hackett
McQuail, D. (1992), Media performance: mass communication and the public interest, London: Sage
McQuail, D. (2000), McQuail’s mass communication theory, 4th Edition, London: Thousand Oaks & New Delhi: SAGE
Moran, A. (1996), ‘Terms for a Reader: Film, Hollywood, National Cinema, Cultural Identity and Film Policy’, In A. Moran (ed.), Film Policy: International, National and Regional Perspectives, London: Routledge, 1-20
Negt, O. & Kluge, A. (1983), ‘The Proletarian Public Sphere’, In A. Mattelart& S. Siegelaub (eds.), Communication and Class Struggle 2: Liberation, Socialism, An Anthology In 2 Volumes, New York: International General &Bagnolet, 92-94
Okon, P. (2014), Changes in Media Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Community Media, Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh Napier University
Okon, P. E. (2015), “Community Media and Media Policy Reform in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa”, In Chris Atton (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media, London & New York: Routledge, 210-221
Oosthuizen, L. M. (2001), ‘The Internal Media Policy Framework’, In Pieter J. Fourie (ed.), Media Studies: Institutions, Theories and Issues, Vol. 1, South Africa: Juta, pp. 189-206
Papathanassopoulos, S. and Negrine, R. (2010), ‘Approaches to Communications Policy: An Introduction’, In S. Papathanassopoulos and R. Negrine (eds.), Communications Policy: Theories and Issues, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 3-21
Raboy, M. & Padovani, C. (2010), ‘Mapping Global Media Policy: Concepts, Frameworks, Methods’, IAMCR, www.globalmediapolicy.net (9/12/12)
Sandoval, M. & Fuchs, C. (2010), ‘Towards a critical theory of alternative media’, In Telematics and Informatics 27 (2010), 141–150
Sholle, D. (1995), ‘Access Through Activism: Extending the Ideas of Negt and Kluge to American Alternative Media Practices’, In Science Communication: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Philosophy 2 (4), Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 21-35
Siebert, F., Peterson, T. & Schramm, W. (1963), Four Theories of the Press, Chicago: University of Illinois Press
White, R. (1999), ‘Conditions for cultural negotiation in civil conflicts’, In L. UkaUche (ed.), Mass Communication Democracy and Civil Society in Africa: International Perspectives, Lagos: Nigerian National Commission for UNESCO, 87-102
 
 
Dr. Patrick E. Okon is a lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. He holds a doctorate degree on media policy and alternative journalism from the Edinburgh Napier University (Scotland) and two Masters Degrees in Pastoral Communication and Film Studies from University of Calabar (Calabar) and University of St. Andrews (Scotland), respectively. His research interests include media and society (particularly policy and alternative media interface), development communication, broadcast journalism, media and religion interface, and film theory and criticism.