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ABSTRACT
The digital transformations taking place across the African continent present an urgent need for fresh thinking in the study of publics. This introduction lays out the impetus and contribution of this Special Issue to such a rethinking of the study of publics in Africa. Following in the footsteps of a wider body of scholarship, we draw on Africa’s pasts and present in order to move beyond the limiting assumptions, histories and languages that are embedded within Western scholarship on publics. We make the case that both de-Westernising and capturing publics in a digital age in Africa require openness to a diversity of disciplines, approaches and questions. In addition, we explain how, collectively and individually, the articles in this Special Issue contribute to taking up this task. Taken together, the articles are an eye-opening collection on the unfolding practices of citizens convening and participating in discussions using both newer and older media and communication platforms across Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. Contributions cover diverse disciplinary perspectives and empirical cases that investigate publics convening around digital platforms from WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook to weblogs and dating apps on mobile phones. We see this endeavour of examining the complex and dynamic digital transformations across Eastern Africa as part of a crucial scholarly turn in which the study of African society and politics helps us to rethink ideas and concepts that have heritages elsewhere, and to understand them in a new light.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Srinivasan and Diepeveen, “The Power of the Audience-Public.”
2 For example, Alzouma, “Myths”; Barber, An Anthropology of Texts; Brennan, A History of Sauti ya Mvita; Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution; Englund, Human Rights; Gunner, Ligaga, and Moyo, Radio in Africa; Larkin, Signal and Noise; Mokoena, “An Assembly of Readers”; Peterson, Creative Writing; Roach, “The Western World.”
3 ITU World Telecommunications/ICT Indicators Database.
4 Etzo and Collender, “The Mobile Phone ‘Revolution’,” 659.
5 GSMA, “State of the Industry 2014.”
6 Gagliardone, “New Media”; Gagliardone, Stremlau, and Aynekulu, “A Tale of Two Publics?”; Lamoureaux and Sureau, “Knowledge and Legitimacy.”
7 For example, Archambault, “Cruising through Uncertainty”; Breckenridge, “The Biometric State”; de Bruijn, Nyamnjoh, and Brinkman, Mobile Phones; de Bruijn, Brinkman, and Nyamnjoh, Side@Ways; Hahn and Kibora, “The Domestication of the Mobile Phone”; Obadare, “Playing Politics”; Wasserman, “Mobile Phones.”
8 Ogola, “What would Magufuli do.”
9 Gagliardone, Stremlau, and Aynekulu, “A Tale of Two Publics?”
10 Grant, “Bringing the Daily Mail.”
11 Lamoureux and Sureau, “Knowledge and Legitimacy.”
12 Jacob and Akpan, “Silencing Boko Haram.”
13 de Bruijn, Nyamnjoh, and Angwafo, “Mobile Interconnections.”
14 Burrell, Invisible Users; de Bruijn, Nyamnjoh, and Brinkman, Mobile Phones; Pype, “[Not] Talking.”
15 Diepeveen, “Re-imagining Publics.”
16 Baym, Personal Connections; Couldry, “What and Where”; Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere.”
17 Mustapha, “Introduction”; Banégas, Brisset-Foucault, and Cutolo, “Espaces publics de la parole.”
18 Mudhai, Tetty, and Banda, African Media.
19 Banégas, Brisset-Foucault, and Cutolo, “Espaces publics de la parole.”
20 Akinbobola, “Theorising the African Digital Public Sphere”; Dahlgren, The Political Web; Manganga, “The Internet as Public Sphere,” 112; Mudhai, Tetty, and Banda, African Media; Ya’u, “Ambivalence and Activism.”
21 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe; Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors; Willems and Mano, Everyday Media Culture. See also Mbembe, Achille. “What is Postcolonial Thinking? An Interview with Achille Mbembe.” Eurozine, 9 January 2008. Accessed 16 May 2017. http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2008-01-09-mbembe-en.pdf.
22 Comaroff and Comaroff, “Theory from the South.”
23 Mamdani, Citizen and Subject; “New Frontiers of Social Policy.” Arusha Conference, Arusha, Tanzania, 12–15 December 2005.
24 Willems, “Interrogating Public Sphere”; Comaroff and Comaroff, “Introduction.”
25 Harrison, Issues in the Contemporary Politics.
26 Habermas, The Structural Transformation; Habermas, “Further Reflections.”
27 Arendt, The Human Condition; Arendt, The Promise of Politics.
28 Warner, The Letters of the Republic; Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.
29 Hall, “Notes”; Hall and Whannell, The Popular Arts.
30 Barber, “Popular Arts”; Barber, Print Culture.
31 Barber, “Popular Arts.”
32 Brunotti, “From Baraza to Cyberbaraza.”
33 Lamoureaux and Sureau, “Knowledge and Legitimacy.”
34 Karekwaivanane, “‘Tapanduka Zvamuchese’.”
35 Brinkman, “Social Diary and News Production.”
36 Bryan, “Kuchu Activism.”
37 Grant, “Bringing the Daily Mail.”
38 Ogola, “What Would Magufuli Do?”
39 Chonka, “News Media and Political Contestation.”
40 Diepeveen, “The Limits of Publicity.”
41 Omanga, “WhatsApp as ‘Digital Publics’.”
42 Dean, “Publicity’s Secret.”
43 Gagliardone, “New Media.”
44 Lamoureux and Sureau, “Knowledge and Legitimacy.”
45 Gagliardone, Stremlau, and Aynekulu, “A Tale of Two Publics?”