The re-emergence of diasporic radio in independent Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate on the re-emergence of diasporic radio and its role in facilitating citizen journalism and political awareness in Zimbabwe. The article uses Short Wave Radio Africa and other diasporic radio stations domiciled outside Zimbabwe to examine how diasporic radio has re-emerged in independent Zimbabwe, where it manages to utilise affordable communication technologies to link with the population, providing the people with an alternative public sphere on which to articulate their views and engage in democratic debate. Within a restrictive environment, the people produce their social world through thought processes and ideas as they establish social, political and economic relations with one another to influence their circumstances. Despite the government's control of the media, an oppositional communicative space has been created by a small number of poorly resourced social players who are set on giving the masses alternative discursive platforms.

Keywords:

• clandestine
• democratisation
• diasporic
• dictatorial
• freedom of expression
• hegemony

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Everette Ndlovu

Dr Everette Ndlovu comes from a broadcast background. He worked for Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation as a television producer/director for over ten years. He has also been a stringer for international radio stations. At the University of Salford, Media City, he currently teaches alternative media, new media and digital culture, media texts and audiences, and media institutions and ecologies. His PhD, for which he received the Vice Chancellor's Commendation, was on ‘The role of diasporic media in facilitating citizen journalism and political awareness in Zimbabwe’. He is passionate about the creation of unsanctioned public spheres through which marginalised communities project their voices using digital technologies, i.e., technologies of liberation (Hamilton 2000). He also investigates how new media technologies in the hands of citizens have shifted power from conglomerates to the people in the street. Email: [email protected]