Africa Media Collaborative

Studying the re-appropriation of digital technologies, through reframing, disrupting, and occupying online spaces in the Global South.

The African Media Collaborative (AMC) is a dedicated group of scholars committed to understanding the intricate dynamics of digital technology use within the Global South. Our primary research focus centers on two critical areas: how individuals and communities utilize digital tools to propel youth-led movements, and how African narratives are being reshaped and amplified on global digital platforms.

The collaborative seeks to build representative datasets for languages from Africa in order to advocate for more representative storytelling about Africa and the lived experiences of Africans.

One such initiative is the Sauti Za Africa and Voices of Africa project, which is documenting African languages through text and audio. The research team aim is to build representative datasets from languages across Africa, that can be accessed and shared through a single site.

Through research collaborations, the AMC also aims to contribute to literature on the transformative potential of digital technologies for social change, online contestations and complexities of online activism in the Global South, and the ongoing efforts to reclaim and retell African stories in the digital age.

Some areas of focus include:

• #FeesMustFall in South Africa
• #EndSARS in Nigeria
• #RejectFinanceBill2024 in Kenya

Some collaborations the members have been involved in include Being African: How Africans Experience the Diaspora, funded by Africa No Filter.

The Africa Media Collaborative employs a three-step storytelling model to investigate how youth-led movements reappropriate digital platforms. The RDO model comprises three elements: reframing, disrupting, and occupying.

Reframing: Analysis of how youth are retelling stories that are biased or have been discriminatorily framed by governments, global media, humanitarian agencies, and social media discourses.

Disrupting: Documenting cases of users challenging government misinformation, global media stereotypes, and hegemonic narratives through hyperlocal, community-based storytelling, memes, and hashtags.

Occupying: Studying sustained visibility of narratives in online spaces in the Global South as told from their lived experiences through varied forms of digital narratives.

This model is useful for studying how youth-led movements and other activists or civil societies in the Global South utilize digital platforms for mobilization and challenging dominant narratives, power structures, or authoritarian regimes.

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