What is it about?
African diaspora journalists claim to have a cultural knowledge of African conflicts than their western counterparts, but the extent to which this reflects in their coverage of African conflicts has attracted little scholarly attention. This study bridges this gap by adopting framing and interview methods to determine whether the journalists' cultural knowledge enables them to project an alternative perspective of African conflicts.
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Why is it important?
This study is important because western journalists have been accused of portraying a stereotypical view of African conflicts because of their lack of cultural knowledge. This study reveals that African diaspora journalists avoid such judgmental portrayal by giving preference for a factual style and peace initiative frames which align with what they say they do, but give a slight preference for background context which marginally aligns with what they say they do.
Perspectives
I hope this article will stimulate more scholarly discussions about the relationship between journalists' cognitive role (what they say they do) and their practice role (what they actually do) on a range of political, economic and social issues. Such a research enquiry is pertinent because journalists play a big role in setting the agenda (i.e. what audience think about) in modern society which could influence peoples' attitudes on and responses to issues. Therefore, priming audiences to understand the relationship between these two roles could mitigate the effects of media messages on their perception of issues.
Professor Ola Ogunyemi
University of Lincoln
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Shaping the perception of African conflicts through framing: A case study of the African diasporic press in the UK, Media War & Conflict, November 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1750635218779918.
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