Africa In American Media:

A Content Analysis of Newsweek

Magazine’s Portrayal of Africa,
1988-2006

By: Stella Maris Kunihira

 Thesis/Purpose

 Owing to the misconceptions and

misrepresentations of Africa in the
international media, this paper analyzes
American media coverage of Africa by
examining the amount and type of
coverage given to African news.
 Brief Overview: Africa
 Size 
 Nations
 Population
 Language
 Religion
 Culture
 Economy

http://images.google.com/images
 Previous Literature

 Media’s selection of Africa’s Images

- Michira (2002); Hamilton (1998)
- Misconceptions and Overgeneralization
- Walker & Rasamimanana (1993)
- Effects and Impact of Images on
African and American people
- Ken-Foxworth( 1985); al-Kaleem (2001);
- Saint (1997); Dagne (2006)
 Previous Literature

 Sources of Information
- Wallace (1995); Allimadi (2005); Allen (1995)
- What is always left out: Africa’s
contributions and achievements
- Olujobi (2005); O’Meara (1995)
 Functional Theory

 Emile Durkheim (1858): society as a living

organism
 Robert Merton (1910): Manifest and latent
functionalism
 Methods

 Content Analysis
 Data of analysis of Newsweek Magazine,
1988-2006
 Random sample of 30 articles from 215
articles generated from EBSCOhost search
 Coding: to identify misconceptions and
misrepresentations and how the readers are
mis (informed) by the content.
 Findings

 24 articles on Africa and 6 others on non-

African news
 Themes on Africa were divided into two
categories
 Category 1: Crisis (N=14)
 Category 2: Non-Crisis (N=10)
 Category 3: other (N=6)
 Findings
Table 1: Crisis and Non-Crisis Themes Regarding African Nations Found in Newsweek Magazine, 1988 – 2006
(N=30)
Crisis Themes f (/%) Non-Crisis f (%) Other f (%)

Ethnic conflict 4 (28%) Humanitarian 5 (50%) Terrorism 2 (33%)

assistance

Disease 3 (21%) Women’s 2 (20%) AIDS 2 (33%)

empowerment

War/foreign 2 (14%) Political 1 (10%) Natural disaster 1 (17%)

military involvement achievement

Apartheid 1 (7%) Religion 1 (10%) Atomic bomb 1 (17%)

Terrorism 1 (7%) Wildlife 1 (10%)

OTHER 3 (21%)
Wildlife, Poverty,
Female circumcision
Total 14 (47%) 10 (33%) 6 (20%)
 Discussion

 Unequal representation of news

coverage
 Persistence of stereotypical images
 Little attention to African achievements
strong relationship between catastrophic
events and humanitarian assistance
Questions