New Media: How is it Changing Africa?

1. New Media: How is it Changing Africa? A Presentation by Gerald Kachingwe Mwale May 22, 2013

2. Africa's new generation is using social media to push for change

3. Social media is transforming communication about a continent that did not always have the chance to speak for itself

4. But How is this Happening? With access to computers, mobile devices and internet connections, free social networks are enhancing power of expression on the continent. One reason is that more transparent, user-generated content is breaking through, with websites providing information that hold leaders to account. Africans want to engage and tell their own stories, and they will not let anyone else write for them. For the first time, Africans have a unique opportunity to do it themselves, something they have always been asking for.

5. Where the Story Begins… Since the "Great Media Debate" of the 1980s focusing on the UNESCO sponsored calls for a New World Information Communication Order (NWICO), there have been significant changes in the media industry brought about by the digital media especially after 1990.

6. The Great Media Debate “The Great Media Debate” was largely defined by the dictates of the Cold War. The Cold War had its origins in the political events of 1917 in the then Union of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia (USSR). The West rallied around the principle of the free flow of information while the Eastern block, fronting the Non Aligned Movement (NAM), advocated the need for state control.

7. Issues of Information and Cultural Flows “....The concerns, claims, and conflicts which generate the [current] international debate stems from certain negative repercussions of principles adopted long ago which have taken the form of imbalances and inequalities”. (MacBride 1980: 35). The argument here is that the dominance of Hollywood products on the world scene had forced many consumers in developing counties to adopt American ideas, tastes and values.

8. Third World Demands Developing countries often complained that the only image people from other parts of the world had about them was that of suffering people due to what was considered biased reporting. They were determined to achieve what they called "decolonisation of information". Specifically, the Third World made Four Demands: Demand for democratisation of information. Demand for decolonisation of information. Demand for demonopolisation of information. Demand for the general development of the Thirdworld.

9. The Advent of New Media New media refers to on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation. Another aspect of new media is the real-time generation of new, unregulated content. Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive.

10. Benefits of New Media • Social Media has enhanced global online advocacy campaigns by uniting a global community of service providers, advocates, teachers and survivors • Online campaigns can be carried n anywhere • Social Media has promoted civic engagement by giving local people a voice and for generation/dissemination of local content and interpretation • Social Media is efficient and cost effective. It has generally improved people’s awareness on human rights

11. How did it Happen? Mr. Sean McBride who chaired a commission appointed by UNESCO to study the demands of the Third World, could not have been more correct when he observed in 2004, that: “We journalists are no longer the gate keepers in the market place of ideas. The doors have been flung wide open by the egalitarian nature of the internet, and when you look at the big picture, you see chaos. You see a medium in its infancy howling and kicking against the limitations of the world into which it was born”.

12. And here comes the New Media One such medium which has fundamentally reversed this dependency to the advantage of developing countries is the Internet and mobile phone. This is because of its ability to combine almost all the features of new media, traditional media, and telephone into one, and yet it has managed to cover the entire planet in less than 20 years. The integration of the internet and the mobile phone into one medium is seen as a decolonising factor in as far as generation, transmission, and reception of news and information are concerned in the 3rd world. When the internet hit the world communication scene, traditional radio, television and the print media, discovered that they were being phazed out of the market by the variety of information the web offered and the speed with which it was accessed.

13. The Power of New Media Manuel Castells argues that "one of the central distinguishing characteristics of computer mediated communication is that it doesn't depend on a central or single sender like mass media communication. It is diversified which allows it to integrate different expressions and diversities of interests, values, and imaginations". By this observation, Castells is pointing out one of the major differences between the "old media" and the "new media". In Africa, the integration of the Internet and the mobile phone has made the Internet-enabled mobile phone the single most important tool, in as far as news/information and cultural flows in the world are concerned.

14. Current Estimates… Current estimates suggest that as per March 2013, about 6 billion out of 7 billion people in the world have access to mobile phones. It is worth noting that the majority of developing countries are in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where mobile phones are registering fastest growth rates. It is also significant to note that the majority of the world’s poor live in these continents where they were previously, either unable to access any media, or were poorly served by old media forms because of lack of infrastructure such as electricity.

15. Will Journalism ever be the same again? It should be recalled that the monopolisation of information and other cultural flows by Western based news/information conglomerates had been opposed by the Third World. But now here we are with a widespread medium of news and information which has no owner. It is accessible to everyone, anywhere, 24 hours a day. The Internet has fundamentally impacted on the de-monopolisation of news and information flows in the world. Some studies have called this ability the demystification of journalism as a profession.

16. In Conclusion… This "new media" has characteristics which have altered the dependency of many people on traditional media, monopolised by the big news agencies, for news and information sharing. Social networks are talked about in villages, schools, and fast-growing cities where the middle classes are now demanding access to quick information. Africa has never had good PR, but for the first time we are witnessing a paradigm shift in narratives about the continent. Why is that? Today Africans can be proud to see that – despite limited access to the internet (still a long way off for many villages and districts) and limited freedom of expression and information, social media is revolutionising the continent.

17. Thanks for listening