Africa In American Media:

A Content Analysis of Newsweek Magazine’s

Portrayal of Africa, 1988-2006

By: Stella Maris Kunihira

Thesis/Purpose

Owing to the misconceptions and misrepresentations of Africa in the international media, this paper analyzes American media coverage of Africa by examining the amount and type of coverage given to African news.

Brief Overview: Africa Size Nations Population Language Religion Culture Economy

http://images.google.com/images

http://images.google.com/images

Previous Literature

Media’s selection of Africa’s Images - Michira (2002); Hamilton (1998)

- Misconceptions and Overgeneralization

- Walker & Rasamimanana (1993)

- Effects and Impact of Images on African and American people

- Ken-Foxworth( 1985); al-Kaleem (2001);- Saint (1997); Dagne (2006)

Previous Literature

Sources of Information- Wallace (1995); Allimadi (2005); Allen (1995)

- What is always left out: Africa’s contributions and achievements

- Olujobi (2005); O’Meara (1995)

Functional Theory

Emile Durkheim (1858): society as a living organism

Robert Merton (1910): Manifest and latent functionalism

Methods

Content Analysis Data of analysis of Newsweek Magazine,

1988-2006 Random sample of 30 articles from 215

articles generated from EBSCOhost search

Coding: to identify misconceptions and misrepresentations and how the readers are mis (informed) by the content.

Findings

24 articles on Africa and 6 others on non-African news

Themes on Africa were divided into two categories

Category 1: Crisis (N=14) Category 2: Non-Crisis (N=10) Category 3: other (N=6)

Findings

Table 1: Crisis and Non-Crisis Themes Regarding African Nations Found in Newsweek Magazine, 1988 – 2006(N=30)

Crisis Themes f (/%) 

Non-Crisis f (%) Other f (%)

Ethnic conflict 4 (28%) Humanitarian assistance

5 (50%) Terrorism 2 (33%)

Disease 

3 (21%)  Women’s empowerment

2 (20%) AIDS 2 (33%)

War/foreign military involvement

2 (14%)  Political achievement

1 (10%) Natural disaster

1 (17%)

Apartheid 1 (7%)  Religion 1 (10%) Atomic bomb 1 (17%)

Terrorism 1 (7%)  Wildlife 1 (10%)    

OTHERWildlife, Poverty,Female circumcision

3 (21%)        

Total 14 (47%)   10 (33%)   6 (20%)

Discussion

Unequal representation of news coverage

Persistence of stereotypical images Little attention to African

achievements strong relationship between

catastrophic events and humanitarian assistance

Questions