Heather Brookes

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.