This paper explores the relationship between networked radio, media participation, and accountability in Ghana. Specifically, we examine how networked radio, the hybrid media space that is the convergence of radio and social media practices, works as a means of democratic accountability through citizen participation in media. We do this through an analysis of how two English-speaking radio stations in Ghana act as intermediaries between citizens and the state, underscoring how the networked elements of radio production facilitate public discourse and make the state less opaque to citizens. We show that while networked radio does provide multiple opportunities for media participation, this participation is relatively passive for the majority of listeners, in part because producers face increased interactivity in-studio and must employ gate-keeping tactics to fit the constraints of airtime. This trade-off inadvertently privileges elite voices over others, even if the radio stations work to diversify the voices heard on air. Still, networked radio provides a limited but necessary alternative to exacting accountability from public officials as those very dynamics of participation elicit the state’s responsiveness more regularly than the formal routes established for those purposes. Accordingly, we characterize Ghanaian networked radio as caught between ‘hogging the mic’ for an elite group of listeners and ‘passing the mic’ between them, the state, and the broader citizenry that constitute the listening public.

This essay examines various aspects of my intellectual experience as an international graduate student studying in a North American university grappling with questions of postcolonial life in Africa. Specifically, I examine the intellectual tensions of dealing with the underdeveloped questions of colonialism in communication theory. The article draws on work calling for the de-Westernization and decolonization of communication theory. While the call for decentering ‘academic Eurocentrism’ is important, it is pertinent not to erect another epistemic fundamentalism in its place. Overall, the article calls attention to epistemic plurality and why communication scholarship needs to seriously consider what Comaroff and Comaroff (2012) call ‘Theory from the South’.

Conventionally, the African continent is largely written out of accounts on technology. If discussed, technology is often framed as the result of outside influences or the product of technology transfer from the West but rarely are Africans taken seriously as makers or active users of technology (Mavhunga, 2014, 2017). Recent work on race and technology has been useful in highlighting the contribution of Black people to the development of digital technology (McIlwain, 2020) and the creative deployment of technology (Brock, 2020) but has not always engaged extensively with longer histories of racialization and transnational dimensions of Blackness. Ongoing debates on platform imperialism (Jin, 2013) and data colonialism (Couldry and Mejias, 2019) have been important in demonstrating the disproportionate levels of power that global social media platforms continue to wield and the lingering importance of technology in extractive practices. However, these political economy approaches have insufficiently acknowledged spaces for agency nor have they examined the way in which the state impinges on the everyday lives of citizens. The four papers in this panel deploy the notion of independence to make sense of the way in which Africans have created, used and imagined digital technology. They treat digital technology as potential tools for liberation as well as constitutive of spaces that enable reflection on what it means to be independent. The panel regards the freedoms occasionally made possible by digital technology as always subject to the constraints imposed by powerful actors such as the (post)colonial state and corporate social media platforms.

This chapter examines post-2000 scholarship on gendered representations in African popular music from scholars based both in Africa and in the West. The authors explore the historical and geographical development of contemporary scholarship on the topic, and the voices and scholarly spaces that have often been centered. Numerous studies approach gender and popular music from interdisciplinary fields, such as African studies, women’s studies, and cultural studies. Methods often employed in these studies include textual analysis of song lyrics, and, predominantly, ethnographies to understand performers, performance spaces, and audiences. The authors also discuss the power dynamics of researchers and their interactions with the local African communities they work with. In addition, the authors focus on questions of access and inclusion of African based scholars and institutes.

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