How do African cultures transform when they appropriate new media? This introduction to the following five articles raises and reflects basic questions related to the many transformations that African societies currently go through when they are faced with new media. It situates the concept of mediality in the social practice of those who deal with and experience media. As instances of the in-between, as bridges between actors and their life-worlds, media reveal specific aspects of social life and hide others. They simultaneously nourish curiosity and suspicion and thus, the users transform their life-worlds through media. What media do to culture depends as much on their specificities as on the actors and their agency: their habits, judgement and imagination. Studying media and cultural transformations in Africa hence calls for thorough empirical research that analyses how the use of media has affected sensory experience and the sense that the actors make of their experience in new meaningful practices. Media in Africa also call for new research methodologies. The findings presented in this collection are the outcome of an international research network that allowed African and European scholars to cooperate and to share their experiences with new media in the field sites.

中文翻译：

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文化通道：非洲社会中的媒体和媒体

非洲文化在采用新媒体时如何转变？对以下五篇文章的介绍提出并反映了与非洲社会目前在面对新媒体时所经历的许多转变相关的基本问题。它将媒体的概念置于那些处理和体验媒体的人的社会实践中。作为中间人的例子，作为演员与其生活世界之间的桥梁，媒体揭示了社会生活的特定方面并隐藏了其他方面。它们同时滋养好奇心和怀疑，因此，用户通过媒体改变他们的生活世界。媒体对文化的作用在很大程度上取决于它们的特性以及演员和他们的能动性：他们的习惯、判断和想象力。因此，研究非洲的媒体和文化变革需要进行彻底的实证研究，分析媒体的使用如何影响感官体验以及参与者在新的有意义的实践中对其体验的感觉。非洲媒体也呼吁采用新的研究方法。本系列中的研究结果是一个国际研究网络的成果，该网络使非洲和欧洲学者能够在现场与新媒体合作并分享他们的经验。