| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Centred on the first post-independence state visit of Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny to the United States in May 1962, this article critically engages the recent scholarly attention that has focused on modernisation theory and international media scholarship as they apply to African diplomacy. Contrary to the pervasive post-war modernisation paradigm, it is argued that postcolonial African governments had appropriated a form of managing foreign public affairs that satisfied the logic of media performance of modern nations. If anything, the interwar and post-war nationalist upheavals in Africa provided a training ground for the likes of Houphouët-Boigny who readily appropriated Euro-American forms of political performance to advance their agenda in the public (transnational) sphere. Whereas Houphouët-Boigny and his envoys clearly displayed dexterity all along their American visit, the article demonstrates that mass communication outlets played an equally critical role in the performance of this singular moment in transnational statecraft. Analyzing the coverage of the media with historical hindsight, it appears that the Ivorian press particularly stood out because of its celebration of the African head of state and his visit. Bringing nuance to this seeming confirmation of the radical difference of African media practices and their complicity with the state, the article claims that journalists in all three countries subscribed to a "modernist" metaphysics that nurtured and was informed by the culturally chauvinistic logic of the nation-state. Thus, it concludes that the normative comparativism that has usually sustained the historiography of international media studies is more than problematic.
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