ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of new media and intermediality on political participation in Africa in the last two decades. It focuses on how new media forms and intermediality appear to be deepening the growing disconnection between a young and more educated population and the old structures of statehood. The chapter addresses the impact of intermediality on democratic participation and looks at the potential of intermediality contracting rather than broadening debate on democracy in Africa. It examines the future of democratic participation for a generation where new media forms like the internet can increasingly replace direct participation in the political process. The chapter concludes that the emergence of new media and the intermediality that it both allows and encourages is significantly reconfiguring conceptions of political participation in Africa. It recognises the need for caution in the way we understand the nature of new media.
