Mediatization of Ubuntu: Towards a Philosophical Approach to Media Practice in Africa

Introduction

The media in Africa like other spheres of society have apprenticed under the operational system of their principal, the West. Hence, the ideology of what is defined as news is a franchise yoked to Western yardstick and qualifying benchmark. Thus, in principle, Africa was cannibalized and conscripted by the French general expansionist political economic system of operation – assimilation; although in different European countries, arguably, there are insignificant shades and veneers of other systems of rule like the British’s patent of indirect rule. Ideologically both Implicitly mirror each other.

Society in many cases is, therefore, cued to exhibit characteristics that are traits of how media’s operational mold re-engineers communication patterns that midwife, in turn, critical agenda of behavior and constitution of communities within its enclave. While it is admissible to reason that there are overlapping spheres of intersecting tendencies in influence by the constituents - society, the media hold a principal share of the influence wheel; much of which is inadvertently buried in the cultural traditions of the West.

This critical capital has its design coordinates in values of nucleuses, a tradition that has a different vertebrate from Africa’s news sociology, obviously. The former tends towards the celebration of individuals. That watered culture strayed easily into news determinants and nourished ‘prominence’ as an important news indices. The same tradition pollinized it to a model that became amplified in Harold Laswell’s trite definition of news being, “who” said what to “whom” through what channel with what effect. That lone celibate outlook, with probably veiled potential consequences, problematized news and its’ pouched versions; which may have undermined it as a feeble transmission of vital and sustainable information that it appears in the eye of many these days. Could that deficiency be part of the vulnerability and nursery of disinformation that is running rampant? Who are the most hit?

From the myriad maladies of credibility that are constantly hauled at news reporters, the media, no doubt, are currently spotlighted by a flurry of society-wide concerns about how they trade information around. Much of that being believability related, hence a great many of there merchandise is become pretty difficult to sell and sustain in a complex world plagued by ethical epidemic of disinformation or, as it is popularly described, fake news. As with every failed trust issue the thinning confidence in media messages, backed by a sustained barrage of charges that truth and facts no longer resides with media professionals, is simultaneously met with the ire of embattled campaign by a bruised breed of media professionals. These appear poised to hold the fort of pristine tradition and defend it against sweeping generalization that news business is credibility bankrupt (Ricketts, 2012; de Beer, Pitcher, and Jones, 2017; Berger, 2018). Is the much bickering symptomatic of media evolution in the quarry of other global events and development, or it goes deeper than it seems? With Thomas (2014), it is imperative to ask, what is the complexion of the underlining issue that most journalism scholars, in Africa especially, have chosen to look away from?

The mutational nature of the challenge makes it tricky to hit (start) from the hip. An overview of the dichotomous issues is necessary as it may provide the dimensional implications of media hydra-hegemony on news ecology and production in the South standing at a critical crossroad in their evolution. Fact is, the news media generally appear to be facing dramatic upheavals because of differing gravity weighing hard on them (Beckett and Kyrke-Smith, 2007) such as the deep and disturbing decline in respect of media freedom at both the global and regional levels. Incidentally, the context of media freedom has always been engaged from a linear perspective, characterized by the rightness or otherwise of ambient condition; but rarely from its cortex, the autoimmune disorder evident in the internal constitution of its values.