Circumnavigating de-Westernisation: Theoretical reflexivities in researching political communication in Africa

Ngomba, Teke

doi:10.1080/02500167.2012.717346

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…De-westernization. The term 'de-Westernizing' (Asante, 1999;Curran and Park, 2000;Miike, 2002;Ngomba, 2012;Srinivas, 2013;Waisbord and Mellado, 2014;Wasserman and De Beer, 2009) builds up emotional resistance among Western scholars because they feel pressured by outsiders-their 'upstart' colleagues from the East-to give up part of their intellectual heritage archived over five centuries of colonialism and imperialism. The West claims the credit for 'inventing' the social sciences, including communication, as disciplines.…”

Section: Buddhist Meaning Of Globalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gunaratne (2009a) also argued for the adoption of the Chinese Yijing paradigm as an alternative theoretical framework because of its ability to explain the systematic evolution of all natural phenomena, as well as the complementarity of diversity within unity. But, except for a few citations (Nakayama and Halualani, 2010;Ngomba, 2012;Srinivas, 2013;Zhu and Bargiela-Chiappini, 2013), no one has taken up this challenge.…”

Section: Restoring Regard For Part-whole Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Globalizing communication/journalism, ending fragmentation within philosophy, and analyzing history as life-spans insamsara

Gunaratne

2015

International Communication Gazette

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This article is an attempt to expand the theoretical, methodological, and historical boundaries of communication/journalism studies to suit the beginning phase of the contemporary Digital Era. First, this article suggests that communication scholars should consistently use the term ‘globalization’ to describe the current endeavor to apply the horizontally integrative macro-history approach to produce a universally acceptable body of knowledge encompassing communication/journalism studies. Second, it demonstrates the potential of deploying the principles of Buddhist phenomenology, which broadly reflects the major aspects of Eastern philosophy, to ‘globalize’ communication/journalism studies by dismantling the unrealistic separation of science from philosophy, as well as the division of philosophy into epistemology, ontology, axiology, etc. Third, it demonstrates the possibility of identifying global developments in communication as a series of life-spans similar to the Buddhist wheel of becoming ( bhavacakra) circling around our perpetual cyclic existence ( samsara). It concludes by asserting that because existence is coterminous with communication, tracing communication history will require a global effort that extends the methods of inquiry beyond empiricism to cover quantum mechanics and phenomenology.

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Section: Buddhist Meaning Of Globalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Restoring Regard For Part-whole Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Globalizing communication/journalism, ending fragmentation within philosophy, and analyzing history as life-spans insamsara

Gunaratne

2015

International Communication Gazette

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“…Instead of offering an in-depth understanding of the role of media in elections in Zambia, this article asks what the case of Zambia might tell us about the intersection of digital and physical spaces during intensely politicized periods such as elections. The subfield of political communication continues to be rather parochial, informed primarily by the experience of the United States and the United Kingdom (Ngomba, 2012), while work on media and communications in Africa – and arguably the Global South more generally – often remains locked within an insular, ‘area studies’ paradigm (Waisbord, 2015). Hence, the urgent need ‘to write the world from Africa or to write Africa into the world’ (Mbembe and Nuttall, 2004: 348), and to explore ‘[w]hat a theory of media would look like if it began from Nigeria [ or in my case, Zambia ] rather than Europe or the United States’ (Larkin, 2008: 253).…”

Section: Political Communication During Elections From Zambiamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The politics of things’: digital media, urban space, and the materiality of publics

Willems

2019

Media, Culture & Society

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Recent characterizations of publics – as expressed through concepts like ‘networked publics’, ‘hashtag publics’, ‘ad hoc publics’, ‘calculated publics’, and ‘engineered publics’ – or notions describing processes of circulation – such as ‘virality’, ‘shareability’, and ‘spreadability’ – fail to appreciate that publics are not just digitally constituted but also manifest themselves in, and are intimately connected to, physical spaces. ‘The politics of things’ refers to the way in which things, objects, infrastructures, and physical space remain crucial to political communication in a digital age as well as to the manner in which bodies, objects, and urban space become politicized and digitally remediated. Drawing on fieldwork carried out during the 2011 and 2016 Zambian elections, this article proposes a material, mobile, and spatial approach to political communication. It hereby extends the relevance of the recent material and infrastructural turn in media and communications in a political context. It examines the physical recirculation of digital content, the digital remediation of physical space, and the communicative role of bodies, objects, and the built environment. Problematizing common dualisms between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ as well as ‘public sphere’ and ‘public space’, it argues for an exploration of publicness and processes of circulation across digital and physical spaces.

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“…This could be because, as Chibuwe (2017a) notes, there is not much work on African political communication in general. There is also hardly any Africa specific theory or method of political communication (see Chibuwe, 2013, 2017a; Ngomba, 2012). The present work thus seeks to make a vital contribution to this under-researched area.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, there is agreement amongst scholars that in the study of African communication in general and political communication in particular, it is imperative to pay attention to context (see Chibuwe, 2013, 2017b; Karam, 2018; Ngomba, 2012). As Ngomba (2012) points out, it is important to adopt context-sensitive theoretical frameworks in studying changes in political communication campaigns in Africa. Consequently, this article also pays particular attention to context in the comparative analysis of ZANU-PF advertisements for the July 2013 and July 2018 elections.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Repetition without change?’: A critical discourse analysis of selected ZANU-PF advertisements for the July 2013 and July 2018 elections

Chibuwe

Munoriyarwa

2023

Discourse & Communication

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Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and anchored on CDA theory, we argue that as the ruling party’s governance record increasingly came under scrutiny in two election cycles researched, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), largely maintained its old strategies of power legitimation. However, it altered the message in order to reflect the changing intensity of political contestation, an increasingly bellicose political opposition and growing dissent within its own ranks, as well as the shifting economic fortunes of the country. Forced to campaign under these circumstances, ZANU-PF trusted, with notable variations, its old discourse strategies to produce election advertisements that legitimised its hold on power, hegemony and spread its ideology. The findings show that whereas in July, 2018, the message changed to reflect the leadership change, ZANU-PF’s legitimation strategies remained unchanged. Similarly, we note that whereas the ‘them’ that had to be de-legitimised in 2013 was unequivocally Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change Tsvangirai (MDC-T), in 2018 ‘them’ not only referred to Nelson Chamisa and MDC Alliance, but it also referred to Mugabe and curiously not ZANU-PF under Mugabe. Including ZANU-PF under Mugabe, we argue, would have also inadvertently de-legitimised both Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF.

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Circumnavigating de-Westernisation: Theoretical reflexivities in researching political communication in Africa

Cited by 11 publications

References 45 publications

Globalizing communication/journalism, ending fragmentation within philosophy, and analyzing history as life-spans insamsara

Globalizing communication/journalism, ending fragmentation within philosophy, and analyzing history as life-spans insamsara

‘The politics of things’: digital media, urban space, and the materiality of publics

‘Repetition without change?’: A critical discourse analysis of selected ZANU-PF advertisements for the July 2013 and July 2018 elections

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