Media in Africa: Political, Cultural and Theoretical Trajectories in the Global Environment

This article tackles assumptions made by Louise Bourgault in her pioneering book, Mass Media in Sub-Saharan Africa. The article discusses her claims about African journalism in relation to her engagement with western approaches, and with regard to issues of orality, the Shannon and Weaver communication model and to the megadiscipline of media studies. Short case studies are provided of the emergence of print media in several African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa), with the South African analysis looking more in-depth at the political economy of print media in the context of post-apartheid ideologies. The article concludes by positioning media studies in Africa against western media studies, and media studies as a ‘megadiscipline’, the intention being to account for and explain some of the disparities between North—South media studies and print media economies.