Podcasts and new orality in the African mediascape (original) (raw)
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Orality , Gender & Social Audio in Rural Africa
2014
We claim that digital platforms designed for people in low-income, low-literacy rural communities to share locally relevant, voice-based content did not widen dissemination because they were incompatible with the nuances of cooperation. We base this on a long-term study of interactions with prototypes to record, store and share voice files via a portable, communally owned display in South Africa. We discuss how men and women used, appropriated and interacted with the prototypes, and how the prototypes and use contexts supported different genres of orality and nonverbal elements of co-present interactions. Rhythm and mimicry of nonverbal elements participated in cooperation and, we argue, that engaging with such qualities enriches creativity in designing media sharing systems.
Talking Books The Paratextuality of African Literary Podcasts
English Studies in Africa, 2020
Recently, literary critics have grown concerned that serious literary criticism is slowly being replaced by a literary culture of endorsement that has proliferated online. They fear that 'hot takes,' listicles and simplified systems of ranking books ('buy or don't buy,' star ratings and so on) are gaining cultural currency while serious analysis and critique is going out of style. One critic, Christian Lorentzen, even wonders: 'What if a generation of writers grew up with nobody to criticize them?' At the same time, reviews, interviews and other content concerning African literature have become widely available online. In particular, African literary podcasts have become increasingly popular and influential. By examining the nature of paratextuality, via Gérard Genette, in reference to African literary podcasts, this article examines whether African literary podcasts are contributing to this decline, offering audio equivalents of traditional reviews or creating an innovative mode of critique. It concludes that African literary podcasts are sui generis and provide both substantive critique and an outlet for voices traditionally marginalized from mainstream literary discourse.
Critique of podcasting as an anthropological method
Ethnography, 2020
Digital audio technologies have expanded the methodological possibilities for anthro-pological research. This article explores some of the implications of using podcasting as an anthropological method, specifically an experiment in which interlocutor interviews were regularly published as part of an exploration into digital politics in India. The article uses the reflexive insights garnered from making the series to interrogate the possibilities of interlocutor interview podcasting for anthropology. Further to this, it exploits the interlocutors' expertise on digital practices to reverse the analytical gaze, asking what their experiences of the digitalising Indian public sphere can teach us about changing academic/anthropological practices, especially regarding the enabling (or not) of new ways of speaking, vocal performances, the possibility for immediate publishing, and celebrations of newness. Building from these critical appraisals, it is suggested that the latent promise of interlocutor interview podcasting lies in the potential to create 'aural intimacy' and a 'circulating copresence'.
Conducting Media Ethnographies in Africa
It's another typical day at Radio X, a local radio station in the shadow of , inaugurated as one of the seven wonders of the world in 2012. DJs are bustling about getting ready to go on air; producers are chatting animatedly on their phones, setting up interviews; others are downstairs broadcasting "pavement radio" to local factory workers; and a group of teenagers are upstairs in the meeting room ABSTRACT This chapter explores the methodology of ethnography in postcolonial Africa, with specific reference to anthropological media research. The chapter draws on an ethnography of a local radio station in South Africa as a starting point from which to make several observations about media ethnographies and anthropological approaches to media production and consumption. It outlines how the chosen methodology revealed unique characteristics of the local, as well as how the findings and experiences could be related to national and regional contexts. Moreover, the chapter explores notions of reflexive "backyard" or "native" ethnographies, and reveals the complex relational issues that can arise from this approach. This case study is premised on the notion of media as a collective mediation of culture; and argues that the practice of ethnography allows for a refreshing departure from the more common armchair textual analyses that permeate media studies.
2013
The Internet and mobile phones are changing the face of radio across the world, especially in the technologically advanced countries from the North (See Carlsson, 2006, Crisell, 2004, Buckly, 2000). In Africa, however, radio remains at the very best traditional for most people who still consume it through the simpler modes like listening. However with the growth of digital telecommunications networks, the continent is slowly witnessing some radical changes of the radio medium and its associated practices for a significant minority of people and institutions that are strategically positioned to harness the benefits of this change. In a recent study conducted on radio convergence by Moyo et al (2011) covering 4 countries in Southern Africa, it was more than evident that the uptake of new ICTs by the radio institution and its audiences could be rated as fairly high. In South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the appropriation of digital media by private, public and community radio stations was transforming radio as a medium thus making it, at least in principle, more accessible through the multiple delivery platforms of webcasting, social media, podcasting and mobile streaming. In most cases, these technologies had a profound impact on radio’s institutional cultures and journalistic practices especially in the way content is produced, disseminated and even consumed by audiences. Although the impact of technologies on radio stations varied significantly in private, public, and community radio stations, mobile and online practices by journalists, programme presenters, and their audiences seemed to be blurring boundaries of roles between radio journalists and their audiences, and amongst the professional actors themselves. Audiences were seen to be increasingly more actively involved in participating in news and current affairs particularly through mobile text messaging and social media like Facebook and Twitter. Hence, theoretically the Internet has arguable increased the visibility of ordinary people in radio where they are increasingly re-negotiation previous traditional roles and spaces in order to influence the radio news agenda, if not tell their stories themselves. Scholars have variously referred to this new experience of hyper presence of ordinary citizens in ‘invented’ and ‘invited’ media spaces (See Miraftab, 2004) as ‘the demotic turn’, ‘citizen journalism’, ‘participatory journalism’, ‘citizen-generated media’, ‘we media’,’ (See Turner, 2009; Gillmor, 2006; Kolodzy, 2006, Allan, 2010). Across Southern Africa there is ample evidence of the confluence between mainstream radio journalism and the so-called citizen journalism depending on the country case in question. However, what is not particularly clear is whether those practices by ordinary people can be referred to as citizen journalism or participatory journalism in the sense of empowerment and transformative civic agency. In most cases, the optimism on the agency of these practices has been based on the romanticisation of digital media and participation yet as I argue elsewhere, participation is not always positive, ‘as it can be top-down, mediated, regulated, and therefore exclusive and undemocratic’ (Moyo, 2012:484). It can also serve as a regime of endorsement in the construction of elite hegemony. Similarly, digital media can also be reconstructed to support undemocratic cultures that are not only embedded in radio’s organizational and institutional journalistic practices, but also in the power relations in society. Another important point about the study of the impact of the Internet and mobile phones on radio in Southern Africa is that most digital radio cultures and practices are very nascent. Their crystallisation into new journalistic routines in time and space would not just depend on the creative agency of radio and its publics, but the broader social, economic and political structures within which such agency is negotiated. As such, there is need for a constructivist approach that pays as much attention to the potential of technologies as it does to structure and agency. This is what this chapter endeavours to do in its critique of radio convergence and its affordances to radio journalism.
PODCASTS – A TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL?
While the pedagogical benefits and challenges of podcasting as a teaching and learning practice are well researched – albeit with ambivalent results - literature on the potential of podcasting as a socially inclusive technology is scanty. Using a quantitative survey design, framed by concepts such as emerging technologies, low-threshold applications and non-traditional students, this project investigated how students in a large institution in the Western Cape accessed and used podcasts. Findings indicate that podcasting was well received by all students, but that non-traditional students, i.e. mature, African home language students engaged most extensively with podcasts. Regular recordings of difficult, content-heavy lectures were perceived as most effective, confirming that course design matters more than student profile in terms of podcasting usage. In our context, which is defined by resource limitations and fear of technology among both lecturers and students, the simplicity and accessibility of podcasts promises a successful mainstream adoption of a low threshold application in African higher education.
THE EFFECT OF MASS MEDIA, ICT AND GLOBALIZATION ON ORAL LITERATURE IN AFRICA
FCE, Kano, 2019
Oral literature is the vast field of knowledge through which cultural information and messages are transmitted verbally from one generation to another. It is the complex corpus of verbal arts created as a means of recalling the past. One major feature of oral literature, which relates to the nature of performance, is the involvement of the community in the creative process as well as in the criticism. Every performance is for and about the audience. Oral literature is steadily attracting scholarly attention in the post-colonial African context, which is more and more becoming saturated by the mass-media outlets. The researcher, therefore, intends to highlight the interface of orature, multimedia, ICT and globalization as well as the effect of mass media on oral literature, particularly in Africa through the lens of Post-Colonialism.