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Coverage of Africa in American Popular Magazines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Jerry Domatob
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Extract

Our students read magazines. Many of us, as professors, assign popular news magazines in our classes for the discussion of current events. This essay examines the coverage of Africa in Time and Newsweek to explore the images they present to their readers.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Winter 1994 , pp. 24 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1994

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Footnotes

*

Dr. Jerry Domatob is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at the University of Northern Iowa. He studied in Canada and the U.S. and was department head at Maiduguri in Nigeria. He has co-edited three books and published several articles in international journals.

References

Notes

1. A data search in the newspaper and magazine section in Newsbank on CDROM indicated all the stories mentioning Africa from August 1989 to August 1991 in the two magazines. Besides South Africa, general African stories on such topics as AIDS, famine and disaster as well as Kenya were found. South Africa was 1, Kenya 3 and news items referring to the entire continent were ascribed the number 2. Because Kenya was the only country besides South Africa found, it was given the number 3. The entire story served as the unit of analysis. All 85 cases were coded based on a modified version of the Deutschmann news story categories (see Deutschmann, Paul J., News-page Content of Twelve Metropolitan Dailies. Cincinnati: Scripps-Howard Research, 1959 Google Scholar).

The following categories were used: politics and government; arts and education; trade and diplomacy; crisis and disasters; and general. The Deutschmann categories were collapsed because all the stories found fitted in the six enumerated below:

Politics and Government: These were stories on state, government and political party activities.

Trade and Diplomacy: News reports on war, diplomacy, foreign relations, defence as well as stories on trade, the economy, transport, agribusiness, labor; wages and natural resources fell under this category.

Arts and Education: Stories on education, arts, culture, religion and philosophy were coded in this section.

Crisis and Disasters: Crimes, public and moral problems such as alcohol, divorce, drugs, race relations and corruption were coded under this category. It also included news items on accidents, disasters, famines, droughts, floods as well as public health calamities such as AIDS,

General: Stories on sports, animals, children and people in general.

Coding data were computer analyzed to calculate frequencies and percentages and perform rank order correlations. Reliability was enhanced through cross-checking by another coder.

2. Siegal, Sidney and Castellan, John, Non-parametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition (NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1988).Google Scholar

3. Ogbondah, Chris, “Can the Devil Speak the Truth? The New York Times Coverage of Mandela’s U.S. Visit,” Paper presented at the Southeast regional colloquium of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Orlando, Florida, February 28 to March 2, p. 6.Google Scholar

4. Ogbondah, p. 7.

5. Cornelius B. Pratt, “Western Journalism Confounded by Death and War in Africa,” Media Development (1992), no. 4.

6. Anyaoku, Emeka, “The Image of Africa,” West Africa (27 April-3 May 1992)Google Scholar.

7. Ankomah (1993), p. 13.

8. Clough, Michael, U.S. Policy Toward Africa and the End of The Cold War, (NY: Council On Foreign Relations Press, 1992), p. 25.Google Scholar

9. Osborn Elliot, “Decade of the Cities,” Newsweek (25 January 1993), p. 12.