Ideological Construction of Africa

The ideological construction of Africa in the British news.

Ideology defined

1.     A unified set of ideas pertaining to a particular philosophy, especially political, ie, communism, fascism Socialism.

2.     The consent of the people to accept taken-for-granted concepts. In this sense the workings of ideology go unnoticed, naturalised beliefs that come to be viewed as common-sense can be said to be working ideologically.

South Africa will often be the exception that proves the rule, because of its – until recently white domination and close association with the west.

By examining the representations of Sub-saharan Africa we can discover how these representations contribute to the shaping of popular knowledge.

We are concerned with the way in which the media builds (social) identities, social relations and systems of belief.

No media text exists in isolation. The ideological workings of the media are cumulative. All common-sense representations of Africa in the news are intertextually related to all the previous ‘African’ texts.

It is the intertextual ‘history’ that readers and writers draw upon in the interpretation and production of texts.

News Items on Africa constitute a relatively small proportion of total news. 4%

What subject matter do news items about Africa address ?

          War, Famine, Disease etc

Within this narrow subject block certain themes (or propositions come to the fore). see below

The cumulative affect of a homogenous selection of regularly occurring subjects is the construction of a stereotypical representation of Africa in the minds of readers.

Heather Brookes has identified certain themes/propositions that exist in African news reporting.

Africans fight/kill each other.

Africans cannot negotiate/make peace

Africans are uncontrollably and excessively violent

Africans are helpless

Lots of people die in Africa

Africans do not respect Human Rights

Westerners are not safe in Africa/ Africans are dangerous.

Should the West help Africa

Going beyond these general themes, discourse analysis seeks to examine wording and syntactic structure.

Producers of texts lexicalize areas of experience by drawing on clusters of interrelated words and meanings.

Where a large concentration of interrelated terms occurs, this over-lexicalization indicates a key preoccupation of the society which produces the text.

Consider all the possible words for women

Consider all the possible words for black people.

By using interrelated terms certain words can replace others, offering a new naturalised yet ideologically potent common-sense understanding.

A good example is the naturalised reformulation of ‘loans’ to African states as ‘aid’ which obscures the exploitative nature of this phenomenon.

'French cut interest on Third World aid'

'Britain takes IMF line on aid to Africa'

Aid can even be substituted for ‘weapons’

'Bush seeking more aid for Angolan rebels'

'US weapons boost Angolan rebels'

These two headlines report the same event on the same day.

Other examples of naturalised reformulations are the regular use of ‘regime’ for ‘government’ and ‘tribal’ for all conflicts.

'Hopes of ceasefire grow in Liberian civil war'

          Two days later

'Liberian talks fail to stem brutal tribal feud'

The latter  is a completely reformulated and dominant view of conflict in Africa. It has a trivializing effect, portraying Africans as fighting for the sake of fighting.

Metaphor

Choices of metaphor are ideologically significant in that they construct reality in different ways.

Because metaphor is a pervasive part of language and frequently naturalized within cultures, we are generally unaware of it and its structuring of our beliefs.

Consider head the metaphors for immigration - tide, flood something to put barriers up against.

Perhaps the most archetypal metaphorical construction of Africa is in terms of darkness

What does the symbolic use of darkness suggest?

Evil Sin Paganism and Unenlightenment

Africans are primitive, savage, murderous and violent

Darkness gives a sense of anarchy and chaos that is beyond normal understanding.

Closely linked to darkness are the western preoccupations of witchcraft, magic, primitive religion and mythology

the words vanish and spell are often used.

The metaphors of darkness and witchcraft both have a lengthy discursive history in precolonial and colonial texts.

Africa is a threat to the West in terms of being a drain on western resources. The parasitic nature of the relationship is emphasized in 'life-blood' and 'burden'. Burden alos evokes a sense of onerous responsibility. Former colonial powers must care for and control their former colonies. This is the responsibility of the parent races to the child-like African.

Two common metaphors in discourse about ethnic groups and foreigners are those of flood and disease.

'Liberian talks fail to stem brutal tribal feud.'

implies uncontrollably violent and savage people whose natural urges of violence are so strong that they are unstoppable as a flood or tide.

Spreading Riot contagious 

Metaphors relating to political leaders portray them as trapped animals who fanatically hold onto power at all costs, desperate but parasitic beggars, criminal gangsters and sychophantic suitors who fawn and flatter for their own purposes.

 

The role of a rescue service for Westerners is foregrounded, this hides other possibly problematic actions by the western military in Africa

Human Participants

Binary opposition: Western Participants and African Participants

these are basically split into four groups:

the state   political leaders    the military(both state and guerilla armies)   civilians

Western participants are consistently constructed as agents/doers

This is achieved grammatically by placing them as actors or sayers of material or verbal processes.

'French cut interest on Third World aid'

'Mitterrand promises African leaders easier terms for aid'

'British aid threat to corrupt Third World regimes'