Sociolingo’s Africa

Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Politics of Belonging
By Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Review
“An exceptionally rich and thought-provoking work. Nyamnjoh gives us a vivid, well researched picture of the new African media landscape, while asking probing questions about both journalistic practice and the meaning of democracy.”–James Ferguson, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University
“Nyamnjoh’s book is a worthwhile addition to the growing body of knowledge on African communication and politics. It is creatively rendered in a descriptive and critical style that combines the anthropologist’s eyes for patterned behaviour and the journalist’s nose for social criticism. The result is a delicious rendition on the complex role of communication in democracy. This should be required reading in journalism, political science, and sociology.”–Charles Okigbo, Department of Communication, North Dakota State University ‘This latest work by Professor Francis Nyamnjoh raises the level of the debate on the media and the democratization agenda in Africa to a very high level with perceptive and insightful analysis of the problematic. The work is informed, detailed, useful, and meaningful. It serves as an outstanding contribution and source for scholars, professionals and top-level decision makers in the area of media and democracy in Africa. It is a “must” text for all students of mass media and development in Africa.”–Cecil Blake, Chair, Africana Studies Department, University of Pittsburgh“Nyamnjoh’s analysis innovatively develops a new conceptual framework in assessing studies on, and the state of, African media and how people use them. His theoretical achievement is to critique African essentialism on the one hand, while developing an indigenized critical theory on the other. He speaks from Africa, about Africa, in an engagement with Western theory, assumptions and policies. This study is a breakthrough.”–Keyan G. Tomaselli, University of KwaZulu-Natal and President, South African Communication Association
Book Description
This major study explores the role of the mass media in promoting democracy and empowering civil society in Africa. The author contextualizes Africa within in the rapidly changing global media and shows how patterns of media ownership and state control have evolved and the huge difficulties under which most African media workers labor. The author also explores the whole question of media ethics and professionalism in Africa. The general analysis is supported by a detailed case study of Cameroon.
Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Politics of Belonging
By Francis B. Nyamnjoh
ISBN-10: 1842775839ISBN-13: 978-1842775837
Available from Amazon.com
This entry was posted on January 28, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under AFRICA, AFRICAN COUNTRIES, AFRICAN LITERATURE, AFRICAN POLITICS, African book review, African books, African democracy, African writers, Cameroon, POLITICS. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
from http://sociolingo.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/african-bookafricas-media-democracy-and-the-politics-of-belonging/#comment-24821 accessed 1/28/08