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.
What subject matter do news items about Africa address ?
See overhead.
Within this narrow subject block certain themes (or propositions come to the fore).
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.
In the classroom it is probably best to focus on headlines.
Headlines form an intrinsic part of a news story. They function as initial summaries of news texts and foreground what the producer regards as most relevant and of maximum interest or appeal to readers.
I’ve identified certain themes/propositions that exist in African news reporting.
Africans fight/kill each other.
Headline 1
Headline 2
Africans cannot negotiate/make peace
Headline 3
Headline 4
Africans are uncontrollably and excessively violent
Headline 5
Africans are helpless
Headline 6
Headline 7
Lots of people die in Africa
Headline 8
Africans do not respect Human Rights
Headline 9
Headline 10
Westerners are not safe in Africa/ Africans are dangerous.
Headline 11
Should the West help Africa
Headline 12
Headline 13
Match themes to headlines.
List of Headlines
Newspaper headlines
Topic – Sub-saharan Africa
1 Killings cast shadow over Liberian peace talks
2 Doe’s troops kill top rebel tactician
3 Liberian talks fail to stern brutal feud
4 Venue row scuttles Mozambique talks
5 Rebels kill thousands
6 Britons flee as Liberian leader begs US for help
7 Liberia calls for US help
8 Drought kills 600
9 Ethiopian boys ‘being forced to fight’
10 Student dies as Kaunda troops storm campus
11 Navy ready to rescue Britons from Liberia
12 British aid threat to corrupt Third World regimes
13 Aid rules revised
14 French cut interest on Third Wor1d aid
15 Britain takes IMF line on aid to Africa
16 Bush seeking more aid for Angolan rebels
17 US weapons boost Angolan rebels
18 Hopes of ceasefire grow in Liberian civil war
19 Liberian talks fail to stem brutal tribal flied
20 Spreading food price riots leave 15 dead in Lusaka
21 Doe woos US with call for peace talks
22 Mitterrand promises African leaders easier terms for aid
23 Joint aid appeal
24 Americans leave as Liberians talk
25 Americans leave Liberia
26 Royal Navy standing by to help rescue foreigners from Liberia
27 US asks for Soviet help on Savimbi plan
28 Peace talks start
29 Ceasefire progress
30 Peace talks for Liberia
31 Liberia peace talk snag
32 Angola peace talks delay
33 14 killed in Zambia riots over food prices
34 Second airlift as final showdown looms in Liberia
35 Aid plan scorned
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 (14)
Britain takes IMF line on aid to Africa (15)
Aid can even be substituted for ‘weapons’
Bush seeking more aid for Angolan rebels (16)
US weapons boost Angolan rebels (17)
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 (18)
Two days later
Liberian talks fail to stem brutal tribal feud (19)
The latter (19) 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. (19)
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 (Headline 20)
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.
Headline 21
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 (15)
Mitterrand promises African leaders easier terms for aid (22)
British aid threat to corrupt Third World regimes (12)
Western agency is also implied in passive constructions
Aid rules revised (13)
Joint aid appeal (23)
Whom is giving aid to whom – these facts do not to be stated.
readers draw upon previous sociocognitive (intertextual history) representations to supply the typical participants, western agent/giver and African beneficiary.
A further construction of western agency occurs in
Britons flee as Liberian leader begs US for help (6)
Americans leave as Liberians talk (24)
Americans leave Liberia (25)
Britons and Americans appear to be agents of their own actions rather than affected participants
Western participants are only grammatically represented as affected participants where they are beneficiaries of western agents.
Navy ready to rescue Britons from Liberia (11)
Royal Navy standing by to help rescue foreigners from Liberia (26)
Where African agency can be identified it is only in respect of need for Western assistance.
Britons flee as Liberian leader begs US for help (6)
Doe woos US with call for peace talks (21)
Liberia calls for US help. (7)
Compare the African sayers ie: beg call woo with those of Western sayars
US asks for Soviet help on Savimbi plan. 27
Peace and negotiation
The African agency is reduced when negotiations start implying that they just happen or they are the result of some external influence - probably western
Peace talks start (28)
Ceasefire progress (29)
Peace talks for Liberia (30)
Where a breakdown in negotiations occurs then African agency is again directly established
Liberia peace talk snag (31)
Angola peace talks delay (32)
Liberian talks fail to stem brutal tribal feud (19)
African participants can even be constructed as agent and victim simultaneously, thus making their deaths appear to be self-engendered:
The only exceptions to Africans being victims of African agents are where they are victims of natural disasters
African civilians are portrayed as helpless victims while similtaneously being frequently responsible for their predicament.
Spreading food price riots leave 15 dead in Lusaka (20)
14 Killed in Zambia riots over food prices (33)
The systematic thematic foregrounding of western participants positions them as central and legitimate players in Africa. It contributes to the naturalisation of the West's role in Africa as leader, mediator, bringer of peace and democracy and giver of aid as inevitable common-sense.
Quotations:
Western sayers are represented as important and reliable, while most African sayers are usually discredited.
Although more spance is given to African sayers in tends to be from alimited number of sources quoted at greater lentgh. However a wider variety of western participants are drawn upon.
African sayers often have their statements discredited by using verbal processes such as 'alledges' 'denies' 'claims'
African particiapnts' statements are not undermined where the content conforms to the western stereotype of Africa and Africans.
The major function of western sayers is to confirm and evaluate events and the statements and actions of African participants.
Western sayers such as 'informed sources in London', university experts and analysts and 'old African hands' (Western civilians who are long time inhabitants of Africa) are presented as credible and their evaluations are usually quoted at lenght, without verification and without it being indicated as necessary.
The role of Westerners in Africa is made into a romantic tale of heroic bravery, survival and sacrifice.
