Covid-19 and journalism: how have international media represented Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic?
Date
2021
Authors
Brima, Abdul Samba
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Abstract
Media scholars have long concluded that the coverage of Africa as a continent of disease, war
and poverty stereotyped Africa and examples include the denigration of the continent with
regards to diseases such as HIV-AIDS and Ebola, on frequent cases of famines and low levels
of economic development. Against this historically problematic media representation, the
arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 opened up a new avenue for academic
debate about Africa’s image in the international media. As fear about the virus grew, so too
was the concern about Africa’s representation. At the initial stage of the virus, predictions
were that the pandemic would spiral out of control and wreak serious havoc in Africa. But, as
time progressed, these predictions have not played out as expected and Africa seemed to have
fared relatively well in comparison with its Western counterparts. But, what were the
motivations behind these predictions? Could they have emanated from past tropes of
international media representation of the continent? Covid-19 pandemic therefore provided
an interesting opportunity to re-examine evidence that scholars have alluded to that Africa
has been under-represented and mis-represented by the international media. To respond to
these issues, this study used the theories of media representation and global flows and contra
flows to find out if Africa was underrepresented and mis-represented in two international
media platforms--the BBC and Aljazeera-- with regards to the coronavirus. Data was collected
from April, May, September and October 2020, and subjected to discourse analysis to arrive
at what pattern of representation of Africa emerged during this pandemic.
A major finding in this study was that different subjects have emerged as interest areas for
different media platforms depending on the country under review. What is an issue for one
country or media platform, could not be an issue for another. Therefore, it has been impossible
to find an intersection point where two or three countries could dominate the headlines on
any given subject. Overall, our finding suggests that international media coverage of Africa
have not entirely been negative or, indeed, entirely free from past tropes of representation
particularly during the early stages of the pandemic.
Description
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2021 Johannesburg,