Marvel's The Black Panther dominated Twitter as well as the box office in March 2018. The stories of the mythical country Wakanda helped audiences imagine an Africa apart from the usual depictions of poverty, war and crime.
What are Americans tweeting, listening to, and watching that shapes our perceptions of Africa and African peoples?
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The Media Impact Project recorded any mentions about Africa, its nations or its peoples that ran in popular media in March 2018. We also monitored tweets to understand what people are discussing about the region. The result was some 700,000 hours of entertainment and news and 1.6 million tweets, which we analyzed for a range of factors designed to tell us not just the number of Africa mentions, but their content and tone. We combinedopinion research, content analysis of news and entertainment programming and analytics to illuminate how Africa is depicted in U.S. media. Findings are available in the seminal report Africa in the Media. Readers can also download our look at the impact of President Trump’s “sh**hole” remark on Twitter.
Key Findings: Africa and Africans barely register on US television
Stories about Africa appeared infrequently on U.S. television: a mention appeared once in every five hours of TV programming. Viewers were seven times more likely to see references to Europe.
Out of almost 700,000 hours of news and entertainment, there were only 25 major scripted storylines about Africa
Only 13% of entertainment storylines that mentioned Africa included an African character, and 80% of the roles were small. When African characters did appear, 46% spoke 10 words or less. Only 31% of African characters were women.
20% of Africa mentions were on the game show Jeopardy. (Not just unscripted, but across all programming).
Depictions of Africa are broadly negative
When references to Africa were not neutral, they were more likely to be negative than positive in both Twitter conversations and in entertainment programming.
Of 32 African topics tracked across all TV programming ranging from animals and culture to travel and immigration, only three had more positive than negative mentions: history, music and sports.
Most mentions of Africa (43%) appeared on national or local news. After politics (32%), crime garnered the most mentions (16%) while business and the economy accounted for just 8% of news coverage about Africa.
Over one-third (35%) of African mentions in scripted entertainment were about crime. Many of these stories were told on America’s most popular shows such as Law & Order: SVU and the NCIS franchise.
Of the 25 major scripted storylines about Africa that appeared on television during March, 14 centered on crime.
Overall, viewers were more than twice as likely to see negative depictions of Africa than positive ones.
Most tweets about Africa shared or voiced reactions to published news media stories. The volume and topics of tweets closely aligned with the tenor of news coverage of Africa, indicating the influence of news on social media.
Of the 5 topics tracked on Twitter (animals, corruption, crime/terrorism, diaspora and poverty), crime/terrorism had the most mentions (8%) with South Africa and Nigeria the countries most associated with the topic.
While two thirds of Twitter mentions of poverty were negative in sentiment, the topic also had the highest volume of positive tweets. These centered on successful efforts to address African poverty. Most originated with nonprofits & NGOs working in the region.
Africa is not a country
In scripted entertainment, 44% of TV shows only mention “Africa,” with no reference to a particular country.
On Twitter, “Africa” by far received the most mentions (27%) — more than any individual country.
Five countries — Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Seychelles and Congo — accounted for almost half (49%) of all mentions of any African nation.
Fiverecommendations for content creators:
Increase the number of stories that mine the rich and diverse cultures and histories of Africa — including in children’s programming — and develop more scripted content that doesn’t focus on crime.
Include more African characters in stories and give them larger speaking parts.
Make one half of African characters female.
Expand the focus from Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Congo and Nigeria to the continent’s other 49 countries.
Collaborate with content creators from Africa and its diaspora.
President Trump's Disparaging Sh**hole Remark
This analysis of Twitter sentiment in the wake of news reports that President Donald J. Trump had characterized some African nations as “shithole countries” reveals a 66% increase in negative tweets about Trump and a dramatic increase of over 3,000% in the volume of mentions of Africa. However, there is no indication of a shift in American sentiment toward Africa or Africans. Rather, the tweets focused predominantly on using the episode as a prop for partisan sniping, while any substantive discussion about Africa was largely absent. This suggests a largely missed opportunity by Americans to counter the disparaging remark with information spotlighting the success, diversity and opportunities within Africa. READ THE FULL REPORT.
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