ABSTRACT
The African media are positioned as change agents of development and in combating the ongoing crises. This chapter underscores the need to shift research foci from media’s role as information disseminators, to consider the processes and contexts of media discourse production, reception, consumption, and the cultural predispositions where meaning construction and interpretations take place. It seeks to argue for Cultural Studies as a useful framework in explaining how social relations are represented, contested, and different interests served in media discourses. Four key Cultural Studies theoretical strands, i.e., ‘discourse’, ‘representation’, ‘circuit of culture’, and ‘language’ are identified and justified useful in analysing the socio-political, economic, and cultural factors that influence the mediation of developmental issues in the African media. Most African media institutions (particularly radio) operate in indigenous languages or local vernaculars that are widely spoken by most populaces. The notion of language becomes central in the textual generation of meanings, as it affects thought and meaning, and its possible cultural biases. Language in Cultural Studies suggests that while all cultural phenomena are signs that produce meanings, meanings are only produced through reference to a system of conventions, which help organise and categorise objects in relation to each other.
