ABSTRACT

Who reports Africa in the British press? This longitudinal study is aimed at addressing the issue. It applied content analysis methodology, the use of four British national newspapers and a sample duration that spanned between 1992 and 2017. It uncovered that Western journalists consistently dominated the reportage of Africa without any exception throughout the sample period. Apart from Western journalists, other journalists or sources involved in the media coverage—African local journalists, Afro-Western journalists, joint journalists, and news agencies’ African reports were insignificantly used. Also, this study further revealed that the use of news agencies’ African reports had a continuous decline from 1997 to 2017. Therefore, the domination of the British press coverage of Africa over the years by Western journalists results in the portrayal of Africa from an imbalanced single prism of Westernised perspective, thereby resulting in the poor coverage of Africa and the spread of further ignorance of the continent to the global audience, which hampers both tourism and Western business investments to Africa. This study concludes that who reports Africa in the UK press is embedded in neo-colonialism, white hegemony, and inequality.

摘要

谁在英国媒体上报道非洲？这项纵向研究旨在解决这个问题。它采用了内容分析方法，使用了四家英国国家级报纸，样本时间跨度为1992年至2017年。调查发现，在整个样本期间，西方记者始终一如既往地主导着非洲的新闻报道。除了西方记者以外，其他记者或参与媒体报道的消息人士也很少使用非洲本地记者，非裔西方记者，联合记者和新闻机构的非洲报道。此外，这项研究还表明，从1997年到2017年，新闻社在非洲的报道使用率一直在持续下降。因此，西方记者多年来在英国新闻界对非洲的报道中占据主导地位，导致非洲从西方视角的不平衡单一棱镜来刻画非洲，从而导致非洲报道不畅，非洲对全球的进一步无知蔓延观众，这会阻碍对非洲的旅游和西方商业投资。这项研究得出的结论是，在英国媒体上报道非洲的人深陷于新殖民主义，白人霸权和不平等之中。