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Africa’s Reductive Images, Contesting the Sources, and New Generations as Passive Victims: A Reflection on Historical and Global Representational Practices
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
physically. In fact, the vital point is not the physical difference, but the over-emphasis and
repetition of that difference.
World Information-Communication Dis/order and International
Media Practices
Analogously, we can remark the impacts of unbalanced World Information and Com-
munication Order in contributing to the reductive image of African continent in various
ways. The order implies the North-to-South power relationship in controlling media and
communication industries. The common idea is that the North-West has far dominated
the ownership and control of news and media industries, as well as other information and
communication technologies. Most importantly, the West has been in control of major
news agencies which have fed not only news also perspectives to the South.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and the Reuters are among the foremost news
media companies that have the restored capacity to manage massive information, knowl-
edge control, and so the communication order of the rest of the world. And, any instances
of internationally-strong media industry have been the Western media in their print and
broadcast media forms. Africa has known names of The New York Times, the Washing-
ton Post, the CNN and the BBC as if they are all and always for Africa, while they make
insignificant, and still commonly strategic coverages to Africa.
In the context of the continuing debate on participation in ICT development, the commu-
nication gap is associated with a ‘digital divide’. Commonly, the divide is as comprehen-
sive as to include the gaps both in old ICTs (radio and television) and new ICTs (the new
media). In this regard, the digital divide has instigated the political, economic, and cultural
divide. In fact, we can be exposed to separate arguments on whether these broader gaps
have already been there in Africa and so they caused the digital gap; or if the digital gap
has lately caused the socio-economic gaps. In fact, one thing which we can maintain is
that the digital gap has catalyzed and broadened the developmental gaps that Africa had
with the Western world.
At the center of the conception of information society lies the idea of knowledge con-
trol as power-determiner of our era, as the sequential substitute of the control of power
through land and machine, of bourgeoisie and capitalist powers of the 18
th
and 19
th
cen-
turies respectively. Compared to land and machine, any current supremacy is claimed to
be established by control of knowledge. Due to their knowledge, trained people are quite
more crucial for such supremacy games than land or machine. And, again it is only the
north/west that has the comprehensive power to provide in-depth and quality education/
training to millions of citizens of its own, as part of its technologically furnished sec-
tor-systems including education.
