"Ce livre est un hommage à Marie-Soleil Frère, directrice de recherches au FNRS et enseignante à l'ULB. Il retrace le parcours académique d'
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une intellectuelle hors pair, impliquée à la fois dans la recherche, l'enseignement et la coopération en Afrique subsaharienne francophone. Lire la suite Durant 30 ans, elle a inlassablement étudié et questionné les journalistes et leurs médias notamment en Mauritanie, au Bénin, au Niger, au Tchad, au Rwanda, au Burundi, en République démocratique du Congo et, bien sûr, au Burkina Faso, sa seconde patrie. Elle a analysé leur rôle de témoins tout autant que d'acteurs de la vie politique et nous lègue un regard juste et complexe sur les dynamiques médiatiques, politiques, sociales et économiques du continent. Le livre réunit des recherches scientifiques tout à fait inédites mais aussi un grand nombre d'interventions de collaborateurs et collaboratrices, chercheurs et chercheuses, doctorants et doctorantes, amis et journalistes qui l'ont connue et appréciée. Tous réunis, à la croisée de la science et de l'hommage, ces textes retracent son parcours de vie impressionnant et passionnant et abordent les problématiques et enjeux cruciaux auxquels elle a consacré une énergie hors du commun. Ils dévoilent la trajectoire unique d'une chercheuse de terrain dévouée à l'Afrique et à ses journalistes. Son travail continuera d'éclairer non seulement les chercheurs, mais également toute personne qui s'intéresse au journalisme et à l'Afrique ou qui souhaite porter un regard critique sur la vision paternaliste sous-jacente à nombreux projets de coopération." (Dos du livre)
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"This book provides a comprehensive approach of the media, journalism and politics in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa. The author argues that there are common features that the media and journalism share in the seventeen countries of Francophone Africa and these make the local media systems different
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from what they are in neighboring English-speaking African countries, and in the rest of the world. The approach of the media in French-speaking Africa has not only to be “de-Westernized”, but also to step out of general overviews considering “African media." This project shows the historical, political, economic and sociological characteristics of the media systems of seventeen French-speaking countries of Africa." (Publisher description)
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"En Afrique francophone, les chiffres d’audience des radios internationales, et en particulier de RFI, diffèrent fortement d’une ville à l’autre, d’un pays à l’autre. Parmi les pays où la radio demeure très écoutée, figure la République démocratique du Congo (RDC), le pays francop
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hone le plus peuplé du continent. Alors que la RDC n’est pas une ancienne colonie française, la présence de RFI y est importante. Installée en FM à Kinshasa et dans 8 autres villes, avec, pendant des années, un.e correspondant.e permanent.e expatrié.e, et de nombreux partenariats avec des radios locales, RFI accorde sans aucun doute de l’importance à la RDC dans ses stratégies de déploiement." (Introduction)
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"In this chapter, we demonstrate the challenges inherent in the process of truly overcoming coloniality in Francophone Africa. As we analyze the progressive institutionalization of the field through the creation of journalism schools and training centers, research networks and academic journals, we
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try to identify the constraints in which scientific knowledge is produced and disseminated. We conclude that Francophone research is not only still impacted by strong ties with the former French and Belgian colonizers but also experiencing difficulties to connect to the research activity that is densifying in Anglophone Africa. Therefore, we suggest that the path-dependency approach can help to understand the current situation of media and communication research in that part of Africa." (Page 75)
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"This handbook attempts to fill the gap in empirical scholarship of media and communication research in Africa, from an Africanist perspective. The collection draws on expert knowledge of key media and communication scholars in Africa and the diaspora, offering a counter-narrative to existing Wester
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n and Eurocentric discourses of knowledge-production. As the decolonial turn takes centre stage across Africa, this collection further rethinks media and communication research in a post-colonial setting and provides empirical evidence as to why some of the methods conceptualised in Europe will not work in Africa. The result is a thorough appraisal of the current threats, challenges and opportunities facing the discipline on the continent." (Publisher description)
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"The volume digs beneath the standardised and universalised veneer of professionalism to unpack routine practices and normative trends shaped by local factors, including the structural conditions of deprivation, entrenched political instability (and interference), pervasive neo-patrimonial governanc
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e systems, and the influences of technological developments. These varied and complex circumstances are shown to profoundly shape the foundations of journalism in Africa, resulting in routine practices that are both normatively distinct and equally in tune with (imported) Western journalistic cultures. The book thus broadly points to the dialectical nature of news production and the inconsistent and contradictory relationships that characterise news production cultures in Africa." (Publisher description)
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"In Burundi, a small landlocked post-conflict country in Central Africa, the independent broadcasting sector was severely undermined in May 2015, following a coup attempt against the regime of President Pierre Nkurunziza. More than 80 journalists, some of them accused of being accomplices to the put
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schists, were threatened and forced to leave the country. Their outlets were damaged and forbidden to operate. Shown as a model of ‘professionalism’, ‘independence’ and ‘pluralism’ until then, journalism in Burundi has subsequently faced huge challenges, both inside the country (where the space for free speech keeps shrinking despite a pluralist façade) and outside (where Burundian journalists in exile have established alternative media). This article identifies how the professional identity of the journalists has been affected by these two phenomena: the challenges of working from abroad as well as the growing control on free media faced by those still operating from within the country. Based on extensive interviews, the author shows the extent to which Burundian journalists have lost self-confidence and trust in their ability to perform their professional ethos and the role they believe they should play in society." (Abstract)
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"This volume examines the lived experiences of Africans and their interaction with different kinds of media: old and new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national, material and virtual. By offering a comparative, critical and largely qualitative account of audiences and users across
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a range of national contexts in different regions of Africa, the book examines media through the voices and perspectives of those engaging with it rather than reducing audiences and users to numbers and statistics, ready to be exploited as potential target markets or as political constituencies. The critical, qualitative research perspective adopted in this book enables us to gain a better understanding of how African viewers, listeners and users make sense of a range of media forms; what role these play in their everyday lives and what audience and user engagement can tell us about how citizens perceive the state, how they imagine themselves in the wider world and how they relate to each other. The book argues that the experiences of audiences and engagements of users with a range of media—newspapers, radio, television, magazines, internet, mobile phones, social media—are always grounded in particular contexts, worldviews and knowledge systems of life and wisdom: ‘It is akin to the tortoise. The tortoise never leaves its shell behind. It carries it wherever it goes’ (Chivaura 2006: 221). African media audiences and users carry their contexts and cultural repertoires in the same way a tortoise carries its shell. Thus far, the bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has addressed the policy and regulatory aspects as well as the relation between media institutions and the state (Willems 2014a). While studies on media, democratization and press freedom are invaluable, the ways in which ordinary people make sense of, and relate to, media in their everyday lives are largely left beyond consideration. As Barber (1997: 357) has pointed out, ‘[w]hat has not yet been sufficiently explored is the possibility that specific African audiences have distinctive, conventional modes and styles of making meaning, just as performers/speakers do. We need to ask how audiences do their work of interpretation’." (Page 4)
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"This handbook links the growing body of media and conflict research with the field of security studies. The academic sub-field of media and conflict has developed and expanded greatly over the past two decades. Operating across a diverse range of academic disciplines, academics are studying the imp
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act the media has on governments pursuing war, responses to humanitarian crises and violent political struggles, and the role of the media as a facilitator of, and a threat to, both peace building and conflict prevention. This handbook seeks to consolidate existing knowledge by linking the body of conflict and media studies with work in security studies. The handbook is arranged into five parts: theory and principles; media, the state and war; media and human security; media and policymaking within the security state; new issues in security and conflict and future directions. For scholars of security studies, this handbook will provide a key point of reference for state-of-the-art scholarship concerning the media–security nexus; for scholars of communication and media studies, the handbook will provide a comprehensive mapping of the media–conflict field." (Publisher description)
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"Cet ouvrage explore les systèmes médiatiques d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone et propose des clés pour aborder leurs spécificités via nombre d’éléments historiques, politiques, sociologiques, juridiques, économiques et technologiques, indispensables pour les replacer dans leur contex
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te. Présentant la littérature de référence, enrichie par les témoignages de dizaines de journalistes africains, et puisant dans l’expérience de plusieurs ONG spécialisées, ce manuel constitue une introduction générale à des environnements médiatiques méconnus et dont les dynamiques internes sont peu explorées. Pourtant, le caractère relativement récent de la liberté de la presse, la nature semi-autoritaire ou l’instabilité chronique de plusieurs des régimes politiques de la région, la prépondérance de l’économie informelle, ainsi que les dynamiques d’appropriation et de participation des citoyens contribuent à façonner des systèmes médiatiques et des modèles professionnels particuliers qui peuvent stimuler la réflexion." (Verso)
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"For decades international radio broadcasters on the African continent were considered the tools of Western imperialism, ideological weapons in the Cold War. Yet international broadcasters also provided a crucial, alternative supply of information in times of state monopoly of the media and when the
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re was a lack of freedom of expression. Over the past 20 years, the media have become more open and numerous in the countries of French-speaking Africa and, as a result, international broadcasters have had to redefine their strategies. Based on expert interviews, this study examines the positioning of “historically established” international radio broadcasters by looking into the strategies of 2 of them, Radio France Internationale and Deutsche Welle." (Abstract)
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"Marie-Soleil Frère propose une analyse de l'identité professionnelle des journalistes en RDC, au Burundi et au Rwanda. Partant d'une perspect
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ive historique, elle montre comment la profession a évolué dans les trois pays, de la période du monopole étatique à celle du pluralisme médiatique et à l'éclatement des conflits, suivis des processus de paix. Elle souligne comment les journalistes ont tenté, depuis une dizaine d'années, de redéfinir eux-mêmes leur identité professionnelle, tâchant de tenir l'Etat à l'écart de la question, mais aussi comment leurs nouvelles pratiques ont entraîné l'émergence d'attentes particulières, vis-à-vis des médias, de la part des publics de la région." (Introduction, page 11)
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"From the beginning of the process of opening up in the early 1990s, to the start of the 2000s, Francophone countries in Africa have been seen as ‘in transition‘, ‘emerging democracies‘ or ‘undergoing democratic consolidation‘. Their media were analysed through the lens of the ‘transit
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ion‘ paradigm. But these regimes are not ‘on their way to democracy‘: they are meant to remain as they are, mixing democratic features and authoritarian traits. Their media landscape reflects this situation, showing both characteristics of a democratic media system and some authoritarian features, generally in hidden form. These media systems can therefore be labeled ‘pluralist authoritarian‘, which seems to be a contradiction at first glance, until a distinction is made between the façade and what lies beneath. In the façade we see a pluralist media landscape, a market open to private initiatives, an absence of a priori control over media content, a diversity of political parties able to interact with media outlets, and journalists who have gained autonomy through the establishment of their own principles of conduct, professional organisations and self-regulatory bodies. But behind the façade, media outlets have to face maneuvering from those in power who wish to control the flow of information through direct political pressure, indirect economic obstacies, dominance on the public media, and manipulation of the legal framework and judicial system. Analysing the media systems of Francophone countries in Africa in the light of the ‘semi-authoritarian‘ paradigm, and not as ‘consolidating democratic media sectors‘ or 'emerging liberal media markets‘, gives a clearer perspective on the issues at stake right now in that part of the continent, and should be a challenge for future researchers publishing in this journal." (Conclusion)
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"L'utilisation des technologies de l'information dans des projets innovants a été largement encouragée dans le cadre de divers projets d'appuis aux médias de la région des Grands Lacs. Cyprien Ndikumana présente un certain nombre d'initiatives mises en place, depuis 10 ans, pour amener les jou
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rnalistes du Burundi, du Rwanda et du Congo, à apporter une contribution positive à l'édification d'une paix durable. Il détaille quelques-uns de ces projets, mais s'attarde aussi sur les interrogations qu'ils engendrent en termes de durabilité et d'appropriation." (Introduction, page 10)
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"Aziza Bangwene [écrit] sur différents projets développés par l'Institut Panos Paris dans la perspective de la consolidation de la paix dans la région: elle présente en particulier le projet OGL Ondes des Grands Lacs, mis en oeuvre entre 2009 et 2013, et dont l'objectif principal était d'amen
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er les journalistes originaires des trois pays à abandonner leurs préjugés et leur perspective tronquée sur les réalités des pays voisins, et à s'ouvrir à d'autres points de vue sur la crise régionale. Elle souligne les acquis de ce programme, mais relève aussi un certain nombre de questions qui subsistent au terme de sa mise en oeuvre." (Introduction, page 10)
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"Johan Deflander revient sur 25 années d'évolution du secteur radiophonique. Il montre comment les multiples nouveaux opérateurs, nombre d'entre eux se présentant comme la voix des sans voix, ont libéré la parole, mais rencontrent aujourd'hui des problèmes de pérennisation, en raison de leur
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fragilité économique. Il insiste sur l'importance fondamentale, dans cette croissance du secteur radiophonique africain, des interventions des bailleurs de fonds et ONG internationales, en mettant en avant autant les avancées que les effets pervers et les défis que charrie cette dépendance financière." (Introduction, page 7)
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