Boko Haram Insurgency in Cameroon

Cameroon has recently become a target of deadly attacks including shootings, kidnappings and suicide bombings by the Islamic insurgent group Boko Haram. Cognizant of the fact that Cameroon has not experienced anything like this since independence, the Cameroon mass media is challenged as to how to appropriately report this insurgency in a manner that will result in conflict containment and management rather than escalation. The researcher set to examine the role of the media in managing this armed conflict through the critical analysis of documents as well as interviews and observations from the theoretical perspective of framing. Framing by the media has been a very effective strategy in managing the conflict by mobilizing the national population against the sect while maintaining calm and lessening panic and anxiety. This effort by Cameroon media is highly commended although more still needs to be done.

Communicating Democracy through Participatory Radio in Nigeria

Community media remains the only key tool that can facilitate grassroot citizens' participation in nurturing and sustaining true democracy through creating and using information content that is driven by the needs of the communities for themselves and by themselves. By so doing, the citizens partake in determining their future through developing the community and educating their people in a manner and language that they can understand. Moreover, community media enables people from different socio-cultural backgrounds within a community, to share information and exchange ideas in a positive and productive manner. This dialogue among communities can be enriched by understanding how development issues affect them; discovering what others think in other communities; and seeing what other communities have achieved. In this light, participatory radio serves as a means of developing the grassroots emancipation that will enable them to articulate their needs in alignment with the cultural and social impulses of the communities they represent through means of technology, that is, community radio. The role of community radio is heightened by the realization that traditional or orthodox practice of the commercial/mainstream media has failed in achieving some of its basic and expected functions to the society such as serving as a true watchdog of the society, especially in a fledgling democratic system. Thus, this paper undertakes a case for sustainability of community radio in a developing society with a focus on both sides of the equation (production and distribution).

Ethical and Legal Challenges of Election Reporting in Nigeria

The probing thesis in this study is premised on investigating why the mass media which are globally regarded as the playing field of politics as well as the road upon which presidential campaign travels every four years could suddenly develop contours, leading to the game of politics being devoid of convivial and smooth playing in Nigeria, especially between 1999 and 2011. The study observes that hardly was there any election in the post-independent era in Nigeria that did not end in serious disputations, crisis, violence and bloodletting such that academics across disciplines declared that since independence on October 1, 1960, the electioneering process in Nigeria has been an experience of tears, blood and sorrow. The study evaluates media compliance to reportorial code which demands factual, accurate, balanced and fair reportage of electioneering stories. Using historical research method which relies on primary and secondary data collected from 150 media professionals consisting of 44 political editors, 10 line editors and 96 political reporters, the study, using power and conflict theories found out that non-compliance to ethical code of conduct for media professionals as well as legal rules governing the practice of journalism as one of the major factors responsible for publication or airing of provocative stories capable of engendering violence during elections. The study therefore suggested how the existing plural media system could be exploited to grow democracy, engender peace and promote national development as it's done in South Africa and other countries of the world.

The Press and the Emergent Political Class in Nigeria

This probing thesis in this study is on how the political class in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria established, maintained, improved and controls the machinery of the state through the press. While establishing media ownership and unequal media access as key factors responsible for the emergence of the political class, the study similarly discovered that the political class emerged because they were read, advertised or packaged by the press. Robert C. North (1967:301) says “politics could not exist without communication, nor could wars be fought.” The media are also the playing field on which politics occurs” (Perloff 2014:37). They are also the strategic routes through which aspiring politicians must travel during elections. Through a case study method of analysis, this study discovered that the political class emerged because they were read, advertised, and publicized by the press. For this reason, the political class regarded the press as partners in progress.

Media Coverage of the 2009 Afghan Presidential Election

This chapter examines news stories about Afghanistan's 2009 presidential election from six Afghan news sources. It characterizes the overall topic selections of Afghan news sources, their election-focused topics, and some of the ways that election stories are framed for readers. It finds that, despite tremendous obstacles that journalists faced in Afghanistan, the news sources leveled a range of critiques against incumbent president Hamid Karzai, the Afghan government, and foreign governments. In particular, accusations of corruption were a prominent and unifying theme. At the same time, foreign news sources and stories focusing on foreign interests were heavily represented in Afghan news sources, leaving doubt as to how much the perspectives and experiences of Afghans were represented in media.

The Role of Mass Media in Women's Participation in 2013 Kenya General Election

This chapter assesses the role and performance of the Kenyan media in women's participation in 2013 Kenya general election with particular emphasis on radio, television and newspapers. Kenya has a diverse, vibrant and largely free media whose coverage of the election was useful in informing, educating and mobilizing women to vote. However, limited and biased media coverage of women candidates, inadequate civic and voter education may have inhibited women's electoral participation as few women contested and won electoral seats in the 2013 Kenyan polls. Therefore, the media should enhance the visibility of women, political rights and issues of women as the country endeavours to enhance gender equality in political representation. To achieve this, the media should partner with women, the electoral body, government, political parties and other stakeholders in Kenya in order to improve women's media coverage and political participation.

Arabic Rumours Identification By Measuring The Credibility Of Arabic Tweet Content

Twitter enjoys the fame of the most popular and widely used as a platform for socializing, including all aspects of life current affairs, religious ideas, political issues, scientific research, and general knowledge. Every single activity of day to day life and human behavior and values is lodged at this platform. Sending and receiving messages on Twitter (tweets) with is limited to 140 characters, In this research the author attempts to understand the characteristics of those Arabic rumour (falsified information stream) patterns. False tweets could be a rumour which is mostly recognized as a representative whose legitimacy, authenticity, precision and significance is either unverifiable or unreliable. Arabic rumours may propagate misinformation on social networks. In this research, the author illustrates the difficulty of Arabic rumour identification in twitter social platform by studying the impact based on Arabic tweet content. Furthermore, the author explains how these content features are too influential in measuring the credibility of those Arabic tweets.

The Politics of Immersive Storytelling

This article applies and extends the concept of social media logic to assess the politics of immersive storytelling on digital platforms. These politics are considered in the light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which argues that mass media in the 20th century gained power by developing a commanding discourse that guides the organization of the public sphere. The shift to social media logic in the 21st century, with its grounding principles of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication, influenced a new discourse on the logics of digital ecosystems. Digital platforms such as Facebook are offering all-surrounding mediated environments to communicate in Virtual Reality (‘Facebook Spaces') as well as immersive narratives such as Mr. Robot VR. This article provides an understanding of the politics of immersive storytelling and of its underlying principles of programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality, which define immersive technologies in the 21st century.

Social Media as Public Political Instrument

Due to its large number public cannot gather in one place and speak as a single voice, and consequently it cannot represent itself. However, public is always needed as political legitimation, therefore political forces compete to make their own definitions of public and use them as the basis of political claims. To make their definition of public close to the real people, democratic mechanisms have been developed. Once in a number of years, people elect candidates who will represent and govern them. But, most of the time they will be silent and ignored by the changing dynamics of politics. Conventional media does not help the public much to express its voice. Most often it becomes the tool of the elite for indoctrination or the mobilizing of bias. However, social media might empower people, because it allows them to voice their own concerns and to have conversation with each other. But, to have a real impact, the conversation must be directed to solve a real problem. Leadership is required to mobilize people's voice virtually and then turn it into a real political pressure.

Mediating Social Media's Ambivalences in the Context of Informational Capitalism

This essay explores the dialectics of media, by considering the socially reproductive and transformative function of social media from a political economic perspective. The authors claim that while media have consistently generated aspirations and fear of social change, their powerful capability of shaping societies depend on the historically specific social relations in which media operate. They engage such an argument by examining how the productive relations that support user generated content practices such as the ones of Facebook users affect social media in their capability to reproduce and transform existing social contexts. In the end, the authors maintain that the most prominent mediation of social media consists of the ambivalent nature of current capitalist mode of production: a contest in which exploitative/emancipatory as well as reproductive/transformative aspects are articulated by liberal ideology.