Radio Convergence and Youth: An Overview on African Perspectives

Abstract

The chapters in this book are empirical case studies on how the African radio is converging with contemporary digital media technologies such as mobile phones, computers and the internet in radio production, distribution and consumption. The profound effect of the coming together of these technologies has a decisive and simultaneous impact on re-calibrating the African public sphere on the one hand and, on the other, reconfiguring the relationship between radio audiences and producers towards increased collaboration. As audiences—particularly the youth audiences—increasingly participate in the co-production of content, media institutions will have to be content with the fact that the balance of power is shifting and that even though they may still leverage their power by merging, co-opting, converging and synergising their brands and intellectual properties across channels (Jenkins & Dauze, 2008), the emerging highly digital media ecology is disrupting this traditional model and that power may not necessarily reside with these media institutions all the times.