Africa Rising: An Analysis of Emergent Africa-Focused Mass Communication Scholarship from 2004–2014

Abstract

This study adopts David Edeani’s seminal work on the methodology used in Africa-focused mass communication research to content-analyze the same within works published between 2004 and 2014. The study improves on Edeani’s work by analyzing a wider and more recent spectrum of articles regardless of topic, publication, or geographical region and by using updated parameters derived from contemporary studies. Results indicate that Africa-focused scholarship is in an emergent mode and developing robustly. Africa-focused scholars uniquely focus on newspaper rather than television content, and case study is the favorite method of inquiry. Confluence with research in other regions includes the preponderance of atheoretical approaches, the use of qualitative research methods, and the use of nonempirical approaches. Pertinent implications are discussed.