Media on Africa: Local vs. Global

Africa. Why is it that the mere thought of the continent wipes the smile off of most people’s faces and elicits a sigh of hopelessness? Why is it that when given a blank map of Africa and told to fill in all that we think we know about its regions through small illustrations, tiny sketches of guns, knives, pirates, hunger and some natural features are what most people draw? There must be a reason why the commonly held image of Africa is so depressing, and I found that it is most likely hidden within the information and media we receive about it.

When scrolling through the front page of the BBC’s news section on Africa, I was struck hard by how unhidden the culprit was.

All the headlines were hard-hitting, with the buzzwords, “conflict”, “military”, “mourning”, and “pirates” all making appearances multiple times. The two biggest images on the page were of a military personnel in Mali, and homeless Ethiopian people lying on the street dejectedly. With the structure, design and content of most of the media we receive about Africa being like this, it is no wonder that most people think of the continent as a basket case.

I then became interested on what the local news scene within Africa looks like. In my search, I stumbled upon an interesting article published in the Times of Zambia just a couple weeks ago about this very subject (link). The author describes how the Broadcasting Services Permanent Secretary of Zambia, Emmanuel Mwamba, is putting a great deal of effort into spreading positive news about Africa and how it is in fact experiencing a development revolution, but people don’t seem to realize or believe it. Immediately, a stark contrast between Africa and the United States became clear to me. In the United States, it tends to be the national news that is more holistic and optimistic about certain aspects of the country’s health and progress, while the local news is plagued with stories of murders in the inner city or vaccinations that may be making people dumber.

The implications of the different tones of news people receive on the regional and national/international level could be startlingly important. Regional news tends to hit closer to home for readers within that region, and shapes their perceptions of their own radii of influence. National/international news is more hard-hitting, though, as it encompasses more people and reaches more people, and shapes the perceptions of people outside the radii of importance. We should perhaps consider beginning to receive a smart balance of local and national/international media about Africa because the tone of the information we hear about a place has a direct correlation with how willing we are to help.

Stories vs. Statistics: The Structure of our Worldview

In class this past week, we discussed the kinds of stories that Americans tell about themselves. By realizing just how off we were in predicting statistics about demographics, health expenditure and mortality, money, and government mandated vacation days in the United States, as well as its rank in those categories as compared to other countries, it became clear to everyone that the picture we have painted of our country is far from accurate. Overall, it is much too rosy.

As our entire conversation focused around hard-hitting statistics and mathematical ranks, I started thinking about actual framework with which people construct their views of themselves and the groups they belong to. I believe the reason so many of us were so off in our estimations is that we have gradually come to believe anecdotal stories which permeate throughout our society, about our society, that would seemingly contradict the reality described by the statistics. For example, because Muslim immigrants are so prevalent in the media, we subconsciously make the assumption that they make up a much larger percentage of our total population than they actually do (we guessed around 5% when they actually make up less than 1%). What a perfect conflict of psychological structure. Traversing the maze of metacognition, I stumbled upon the thoughts of John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University, on the fundamental tension between stories and statistics. His opinions were published in The New York Times “Opinions” section and can be found with this link:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/stories-vs-statistics/?_r=0

Paulos asserts that the difference between stories and statistics is the mindset with which we approach them. Specifically, he states, “In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.” Paulos goes on to make the fascinating extension that an individual person’s or society’s prefered structure of information tells a great deal about their intellectual personality type and whether committing a Type I Error or Type II Error scares them more (described in more detail in the article).

However, not only does the structure of how information is relayed influence how different people receive and interpret it, but the structure of how information is understood can also influence how different people use it. Speaking from personal experience, when I saw just how far below other countries the United States is in terms of basic provisions to its people, and having been given the “American exceptionalism” silent spiel throughout my life, I automatically became very competitive. America was the hero in my story of the world, and whatever country was besting us (often some Scandinavian country) was just acting like the Mycroft Holmes to our Sherlock… we just had to improve and become #1 again*. But such a point of view often has the effect of belittling the context of these issues and how several factors can influence how different countries deal with them. On the other hand, solely shaping one’s worldview by using word-of-mouth stories and societal myths while providing a nation with a shared narrative and sense of pride and identity, also shifts their focus away from reality. What we need is a happy medium, and this can only come when we understand how these two conflicting structures really impact how we think and what we do, thus allowing us to make them cooperate, not conflict.

*"Always Someone Better" TV Trope referenced (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysSomeoneBetter)