Wednesday, November 4, 2015
4:00PM
710 Social Sciences
Wahutu Siguru: "What African Media? Rethinking Research on Representations of Africa in Africa's Press"
Wahutu Siguru is a PhD candidate in sociology. In his dissertation Siguru looks at the creation of knowledge about genocide and mass atrocities in African by the media. His research leverages multiple research methodologies and theories to tease out how the press creates our knowledge of genocide and mass atrocities. He specifically looks at how Darfur has been reported on in print media from Africa and the global north. He is currently conducting a content analysis of newspapers from Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Egypt and just came back from a 6-month long fieldtrip where he interviewed journalists from Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and South Sudan that had reported on Darfur and other atrocities around the continent; these interviews were in addition to previous interviews conducted in Kenya and South Africa in the summer of 2012. During the fieldtrip Siguru also conducted an ethnography of a journalism school in Nairobi in an attempt to understand how a highly ranked international journalism school in Nairobi taught students how to ‘become’ journalists. This specific paper uses a subsection of his content analysis and interview data. It was made possible by funding received through the Bernard and Fern Badzin and the Anna Welsch research fellowships in the Spring and summer of 2015 respectively.
