Sunday, November 3, 2013
How do we know what we know, the media, and the single story from the TED talk
I thought Adichie's TED talk was extremely powerful and thought provoking. Her stories were powerful, she delivered it with amazing poise and brought up some very important issues. I was amazed that even as a student at UC Berkeley, minoring in global poverty, I had completely bought into the single story of Africa. I cannot think of a single positive thing about Africa, except maybe the world cup in South Africa. I instantly think about war, starvation, refugee camps, revolutions, the conflict in Egypt, blood diamonds and colonialism.
Adichie spoke about how these were the topics that dominated American literature about Africa. I do not know whether she would consider news and popular media to be part of literature, but I think she would agree that the media continues to propagate the single story of Africa.
I have an app on my phone called Flipboard. It gathers together different news outlets like NPR, BBC, the New York Times, CNN, and more, and gives you links to their stories. I like to focus on the "world" section. I cannot remember reading an article about a positive event in Africa. The world section is saturated with state failures, a story about how not a single one of Africa's leaders was deserving of some good governance prize, underfunded aid organizations and pirates in Somalia.
This cant be the whole story, can it? Somewhere in the country, er continent of Africa, there must be successful elections, growth in industry or an end to war. Why don't we hear about those? I can think of two possible reasons.
First, first world media is purposely demonizing the African continent. Yes, this is kind of a conspiracy theory. The stories run are purposely negative to paint a negative picture of the country. This negative picture is utilized by politicians, corporations and governments to justify military and economic interventions in the state. This one sided negative picture also causes first world citizens to view Africans as a homogenous group of animalistic barbarians. Rather than seeing them as other people, as 'self' in anthropological terms (Dani correct me if thats wrong!), they see them as 'others'. This construction of otherness allows for the continued exploitation of these people and their resources.
That was the conspiracy theory. The second reason, and not exclusive from the first, is that the media just runs what people want to read. I think it is a generally accepted truth that sensational stories of disaster and death are more successful than positive stories about human goodness. Violence and despair are consumed by the public, and the media, acting as a good for profit corporation should, is just supplying the good for which there is a demand. If this is true, is the problem of the single story the fault of the citizenry of first world countries? Is our taste for disaster keeping us from understanding the complexities of Africa because we just don't want to hear it?
Media is very interesting to me. Especially with the addition of social networks, instant transfer of information, I think it is important to consider how we come to know what we know. Are we receiving unbiased information that we can make educated decisions upon? Or are we consuming a product that was produced with very specific intentions? Is it our responsibility to search for the different perspectives on an issue, to seek out and find more than one story, or should we be forced to confront the complexities of the world in the media we see every day?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think the idea of promoting Africa as a place ravaged by poverty and disease does serve different external purposes. It not only makes people feel better about their own position, and thus can promote satisfaction with one's country and situation, but also, as you pointed out, draws our attention to the sensational and traumatic.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I do think, to be able to critically understand world, and even domestic, events a holistic perspective is required. The onus is on us, as consumers of this media, to strive to understand different perspectives. The western view is one dimensional and dangerous-it gives us a heightened sense of self importance and knowledge while conceptualizing events with an extremely biased perspective. While we may never be able to see events from the perspective of the people directly involved, we should at least be open to different ideas than our own and confront our own biases by looking to learn why people act differently.
I think your post is very interesting. I too have had a single story of Africa in my mind for most of my life. It is easy to view Africa as a whole as an extremely impoverished place of war and disease. I do think the media is partly, or mostly, to blame. I have learned that, in the United States, we often hear very limited stories and perspectives of places far away and very different from us. I am reminded of a talk I recently attended by a women from Egypt who has been part of the revolution since it started. According to her, our media here in the States is presenting no where near the full story of what is transpiring in Egypt. She recommended several online news outlets to follow that provide more truthful and full accounts of the struggle. But I realized that, had I not been at this event,I would not have realized this. I think it would be helpful to find a way to hold our media more accountable to giving us accurate and full stories from all perspectives, but this is obviously a tall order.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to Africa, a factor that has worked to change my "single" story on Africa somewhat recently, is that people in my life have lived there. When I was in high school, my sister joined the Peace Corps in Togo, West Africa. Recently, I've known people who have studied abroad in South Africa. Their stories are not of suffering and poverty. They present the multidimensional, positive, and beautiful parts of the continent. It is these personal testimonies and stories of Africa that have changed my view in part, and makes me hope that, in our increasingly globalizing world, we will start to form more personal connections with people who know the real Africa and Africans themselves. Until our media can do a better job of telling the whole story, personal connections are a place to start in having a better understanding of places and cultures unknown.