Interview: Rosalind Hackett reflects on religious media in Africa

Abstract

In October 2013, the editors of this special issue conducted an interview with Rosalind Hackett, one of the pioneering scholars in the field of media and religion. The interview took place via email and consisted of five questions that address the discussion in this special issue of Social Compass and attempt to look into the future of religion and technology studies. As African societies and their media production and reception are transforming at a high pace, the interview offers a unique opportunity to get acquainted with what, according to one of the pioneers in this exciting field, are the weaknesses, challenges and future themes in the study of religious mediation and mediatization.

Q The social study of religious media is gradually becoming a sub-discipline in its own. What do you think is the major contribution made by scholars analyzing the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, ‘traditional,’ and other religious media to the social sciences in general?

The rich body of scholarship on religious media has made the convincing case that the analysis of religious change has to take into account shifts in media forms and practices of mediation. The move from back stage to center stage for the media variable has occurred for two principal reasons: one, the rapid growth and diversification of religious media on a global scale; two, the work done by a range of scholars (mainly in anthropology, communications/media studies, and religious studies) that demonstrates how adopting media as a central category of analysis in studies of religion can provide fresh perspectives on many of the core concepts in the social sciences (viz. power, agency, practice, representation, embodiment, identity, citizenship, authority, community, diaspora, transformation, and the making of [religious] subjects/publics/counter-publics).

Furthermore, I would underscore the renewed critical attention brought by studies of religion and media to the framing and imbrications of religion and non-religion, and the role of religion in the (mass-mediatized) public sphere. Given my own interests in religion and human rights, and the functioning of minority and indigenous religions in modern states, I am struck by how contemporary media provide capacity for such actors to control their representations and challenge discrimination (whether in the media or elsewhere). In fact, the increasing salience of ‘media practice’ – which would include manifestation, worship, teaching, dissemination – has raised the stakes of media access and presence for religious entities across the board. By the same token, this gives state and non-state actors new possibilities for regulating religion in competitive, religiously pluralistic public spheres.

An added value for the social sciences is the enhanced theoretical discussion, generated by some of the more influential scholars in religious media, of such concepts as performance, aesthetics, materiality, virtuality, mobility, and spatiality. Particularly noteworthy are the debates over ‘mediation,’ which is at the core of what religion is and does. Finally, but not exhaustively, the ‘media turn’ in studies of religion provides exciting new angles on the reconfigurations and imbrications of the local and the global.

Q What are the blank spots that urgently need to be addressed in the study of African religions and media?

The media scene in Africa is changing more rapidly than most scholars can keep up with. For some reason, research on religiously related internet sites does not attract the same scholarly attention as [material in] other electronic media. Perhaps it is because we use websites so frequently ourselves that we take them for granted. Yet analysis of the images, symbols, wording, messages, structure, and design of [the] websites of religious leaders, entrepreneurs, and organizations provides important data on a leader’s/group’s (official) self-perception and activities. Given the phenomenon of media convergence, it is often websites that remediate other media forms, such as radio and television programs, newspaper reports, photographs, or vimeos. So they are like dynamic archives of religious worlds. However, as rapidly as they appear, they can disappear and the researcher only has a snapshot rather than a set of evolving images (unless s/he has sagaciously saved them over time, that is!).

Even more transient and less accessible than websites are the social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Yet with the meteoric rise of telephony in Africa, and increasing use of smartphones and other mobile devices, as well as improved internet access via public and commercial locations, the opportunities for communicating and mobilizing along religious lines are experiencing exponential growth. Clearly, social media represent a challenging and exciting area for research by (media-literate) scholars of religion.

The other area that calls out for more attention is audience research. Institutional survey data such as that provided by the Panos Institute on religious media in West Africa (2009) or by commercial agencies evaluating listening and viewing ratings for particular radio or television programs can only get us so far. More nuanced and longitudinal ethnographic work is needed that would reveal generational and gender differences, as well as synergies or tensions between theology and praxis, in the making and consuming of religious media.

Finally, as case studies increase, I would like to see more comparative research, whether on local, national, or regional media landscapes, or on genres, such as radio talk shows, children’s programs, news coverage, etc. It would also be helpful to have biographies of religious media entrepreneurs.

Q What do you think are the dangers or the pitfalls of this boom in the study of religious media?

The study of African art taught me to take the periphery as seriously as the center of ritual activity. In other words, who commissioned or made a mask or masquerade, for example, or who controlled its use or was responsible for its storage between festivals, could be more revealing than its actual ritual performance. Likewise, there needs to be research on the ‘input’ and not just the ‘output’ side of African religious media, however eye- or ear-catching (or difficult) the latter might be. Getting behind the scenes on website design, program production, licensing, and transmission policy decision-making could provide new insights into the mediatization of religion in a range of African contexts.

For anyone interested in conducting research on religious media in Africa, the urban setting, with its billboards, multiplicity of radio and television stations, internet cafés, and mobile phone stores, is the magnet. But this should not be to the exclusion of the rural context, where creative media practices, whether using mobile telephony or battery-, solar-, or satellite-powered amplification, recording, reception, or projection equipment, are on the rise.

Two potential pitfalls in this turn to the study of religious media are a turn away from more historical research on religion in Africa and a turn away from other modes of religious interaction, such as face-to-face forms of proselytizing, worshipping, or healing. Media use by individuals, leaders, or groups (such as Pentecostals) needs to be contextualized and not overplayed.

Q The study of African religious worlds is currently dominated by a focus on small and electronic media. Is this different from the study of religious cultures in Asia and in Latin America? And if so, why?

While the global forces of deregulation began to be felt in many parts of Africa in the 1990s, as they did in Asia and Latin America, economic growth and media liberalization have perhaps proceeded more unevenly on the African continent due to resource challenges, economic inequities, and unstable governance. The economic factor would also account for why Africa is still known as the ‘radio continent,’ and why mobile phones are so popular, as well as other small media such as video films, audio cassettes, and DVDs. Radio and mobile phones are also more viable in situations of insecurity and conflict or migration and displacement, as during the recent 20-year conflict in northern Uganda involving the Lord’s Resistance Army.

With the memories of colonial domination still fresh in many African contexts, many political leaders have been reluctant to open the floodgates to foreign media. But as state-run radio and television fall behind, and multi-channel satellite TV satisfies consumer demand at ever lower prices, the media landscape looks different on a yearly basis, especially for the rising middle classes. Research on the impact of these trends in religious organizations in terms of media ownership and access, or on individuals confronted with a wider range of religious choices, needs to be ongoing and, if possible, compared to the study of other religious cultures and economies in the global south.

Q Finally, in some of your recent work, you are very critical about the social consequences of religious media in Africa. You point at the intolerance and the conflict that the religious media can provoke or intensify (for example in South Africa and Nigeria; Hackett, 1998, 2006, 2012). What role do the so-called small media play in the incitement of religious conflict in the various areas that you have studied?

In assessing the impact of media deregulation on religiously related intolerance and conflict in Africa I identified four flashpoint areas, namely inequity (complaints about bias in media ownership, access, production, coverage, and transmission); encroachment and displacement (aggressive proselytizing, using modern media technologies to invade and displace); defamation (mass-mediated discourses of power and demonization); and commercialization (decline of public broadcasting, dominance of entertainment programming, and rise of customized, niche viewing and listening cultures).

Additionally, FM and community radio stations, which have multiplied rapidly in many African countries since the 1990s, cannot be easily monitored or regulated by state broadcasting commissions or media watchdog bodies. So in competitive public spheres where the climate is to advance particular religious agendas (particularly if they have airtime purchasing power), others can be alienated or offended. That is not to say that Africa’s modern media, large and small, do not provide opportunities for civil religious debate and public education about religious diversity and coexistence, as in the case of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) religious programming, but they also supply outlets for the mobilization of militant religious groups. Just as a lot of the religious hate speech propagated by Christians and Muslims against each other used to be found in pamphlets and tracts that circulated easily in markets or places of work, as in Nigeria, for example, now it can be sent via text messages at much lower cost. The potential of social media [to foment] tensions and violence between religious communities was recognized by Muslim and Christian leaders in the aftermath of a violent attack on a Catholic church in Arusha, Tanzania, in May 2013. This led to an announcement by the police that they would arrest those who spread religious hate speech via loudspeakers in churches and mosques, text messages from mobile phones, the internet, or social networks. Yet, in other African contexts, the conflict management capacity of social media platforms is being promoted, especially by the Catholic Church.

In sum, researchers on religious media need to be attentive to the paradoxes and agency of modern media, and their capacity to shape perceptions of cultural and religious difference or sameness.