CfP: Workshop on Media Appropriations and Mediascapes in Sub-Saharan Africa

Call for Papers: Workshop on Media Appropriations and Mediascapes in Sub-Saharan Africa: new media entrepreneurs and changing technical and social configurations of public communication. Centre Point Sud, Bamako, Republic of Mali, 2-9 January 2011.

The workshop addresses new tendencies of media engagements in Sub-Saharan Africa by focusing on how various kinds of actors and media entrepreneurs in particular appropriate these media technologies. Recent scholarship has tended to focus on the press and the video industry as important mass media in Sub-Saharan Africa. We especially invite papers that address how various kinds of actors have drawn on radio and TV to capitalize on the new spaces of entrepreneurship and cultural creativity that have emerged from the liberalization of media landscapes since the early 1990s. Many African countries have witnessed the establishment of many new and (state-) independent radio and TV stations, along with a broadening and diversification of the institutional field of media production.

The workshop intends to bring together scholars working in European, African and US American academic contexts so as to contribute to ongoing scholarly debate on theoretical and methodological perspectives on changing mediascapes in Sub-Saharan Africa.

PhD students in early phases of their research may submit an extended project outline. Scholars able to draw on substantial empirical research at the doctoral and post-doctoral level are particularly encouraged to apply. Costs for transport and accommodation for presenters and discussants will be covered (Program Point Sud/VW-foundation).

Paper abstracts of approximately 200 words and a short CV should be submitted by October 15, 2010.

If interested, see the full call here.