The Ethics of Engagement: Listening for Peace

This chapter sets out the central and most important argument of the book as it proposes a normative framework for African media in contexts of democratization conflict that is based on the ethical principal of “listening.” The chapter asks the question: how should the media act ethically during times of conflict? In setting out to answer this question, the chapter departs from the basic assumption that the media have responsibilities to democratic societies that extend beyond their mere functioning as commercial industries, digital platforms, or public institutions. The assumption in this chapter is that ethical frameworks are best developed through a dynamic dialectic between normative concepts and reflective practice: an ongoing process that combines ethical concepts and theories with an analysis of their appropriation, adaptation, and application in actual, specific contexts. Listening as an ethical position requires a fundamental revision of the relationship between journalists and their publics, one in which power relations are radically revised or overturned.

The Dress of Democracy: One Size Does Not Fit All

This chapter considers the link between media and democracy, which is often assumed to be a self-evident and universal truth. The chapter argues that the mismatch between normative models derived from the Global North and the lived realities in African societies is evident in many cases where media have failed to keep governments to account, where the media served sectional interests, and where media ethical norms imported from elsewhere did not adequately speak to African lived experiences. The chapter also notes the many cases of democratic regression in African societies, where the resurgence of authoritarian tendencies has increased pressure on media freedom and consequently on the ability of media to contribute to democratic debate and the deepening of democratic culture. The chapter uses Zimbabwe as an illustration of such repressive government control over the news media that has given rise to alternative forms of media.

Characterizing Conflict, Defining the Media

This chapter clarifies key concepts and theoretical frameworks and explains how they will be used to build the book’s central arguments. The chapter asks questions such as: What is meant by “the media”? How is conflict defined? What are the links between media and conflict? Is there a causal relationship between the mediatization of conflict and its outcomes? The chapter also introduces the question of the applicability of normative frameworks inherited from established Western democracies to African societies going through transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. The relationship between media, conflict, and democratization is a complex one that can be approached from different angles. This chapter considers three of these angles—the critical perspective, the contestation perspective, and the cultural perspective.

Tear Gas, Rubber Bullets and Democracy

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on conflict, democratization, and the media and positions the book within key debates in the field. The chapter explains the book’s approach to the topic of media and conflict from the angle of democratization and social transition and provides an overview of the key arguments made throughout the book. The chapter also introduces key questions regarding the media’s ethical responsibilities in times of conflict and crisis. These questions are complicated by the rise of social media platforms and the widening of access to content production and curation by media users. The chapter argues that conflict provides a lens through which to examine the media’s relationship to publics, politics, and society in a globalized world.

Conclusion

This chapter provides a retrospective overview of the three main arguments presented in the book: first, that conflict cannot be completely eradicated—even more so, that conflict is a feature of democratizing processes; second, that African democracies, and the media’s role within them, is not a one-size-fits-all system; and third, that media ethical values and practices are best thought of as collaborative and dialogic. It summarizes the issues discussed in the various individual chapters, recaps the key concepts and debates pertaining to democratization conflicts in Africa, and restates the key idea of an “ethics of engagement” as centered on listening and reciprocity.

Media Ethics, Professionalism, Codes, and Accountability

This chapter develops one of the key arguments of the book, namely that an ethical course of action for the media in contexts of conflict can only be properly charted if it is done collaboratively between media producers and media users. It is argued that understanding the ethics of conflict mediatization only in terms of professional codes is not imaginative or flexible enough to understand the media’s responsibilities and obligations to societies where there are wide disparities in media access, low levels of trust in media, and a history of state control of information. For media to engage ethically with democratization conflicts in these contexts, it is argued, it needs to conceive of ethics in ways that involve citizens more broadly and cut across social divides. This chapter examines the question of the relationship between media ethics, codes, and accountability to society in the light of these contextual challenges.