Understanding Africa’s media

A consequence of media versatility is the little attention that scholars on media have given to old media and texts that have otherwise not been understood as media. For instance, little attention has been given to the capacity of cloth to act as media.

Yet throughout the 2007 election campaigns in Kenya, one’s dressing immediately communicated which side of the political divide one belonged to (or it was assumed so).

Kenyans’ obsession with wearing suits even during the dry season when temperatures soar above 30 degrees centigrade is a significant message of how Anglophile we are.

The Internet and its corollaries such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, I-reporting, the FM stations and their popular call-in programmes, Internet publishing etc may be the things that define media today. Yet these forms of media are still to be accessed and used universally.

If one adds identity politics to the mix of media and its various forms, especially in Africa, then one realises that it is just as imperative to understand how the new media is reframing people’s lives today as it is to appreciate how within their respective communities individuals still rely on other media forms that may not be so obvious.

For instance, we need to interrogate how changing modes of dressing such as hairstyles, use of studs, bracelets, tattoos and so on are adopted by different social groups as forms of self and group expression because it is through such acts that often people and societies signal their differences and communicate their identities.

Dr Tom Odhiambo teaches literature at the University of Nairobi.
Email: todhiambo@hotmail.com