Congratulations to the winners of the premier I AM AFRICA Short Film Competition! Three films have been selected by our jury in addition to the Audience Favorite, which was selected by you. All winners will be invited to participate in workshops, production training and networking with entertainment industry professionals, and will screen their films at the Pan African Film Festival (PAFF), slated for February 13-23, 2020 in Los Angeles.
The competition was a partnership between the Africa Narrative, YouTube and PAFF. See who won! |
Although a 2015 global Pew survey revealed that Africans were among the world’s most optimistic about their economic prospects, many argue that Western news and entertainment media still focus predominantly on disease, poverty, corruption, famine, armed conflict and stories about Westerners who appear as saviors. This despite the fact that African innovation, entrepreneurialism, music, fashion, art and a new generation of creators, innovators and business leaders are increasingly making their mark on the world stage.
The Africa Narrative was established to help shift the global mindset closer to the African reality, recognizing that the more the world understands and knows the region, the more everyone stands to gain from richer social, cultural, and economic ties. Central to its mission, The Africa Narrative seeks to gain a deep understanding of the impact of media and entertainment in shaping perceptions and opinions of the continent and to develop a richer telling of Africa’s story. The initiative is based at the Lear Center in partnership with CrissCrossGlobal, an international communications consultancy
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Africa in the Media is the inaugural research project, with an initial focus on measuring US media depictions of the continent and their impact on US attitudes and engagement with the region. Read the News Release.
With support from the Ford Foundation, Media Impact Project researchers conducted a major content analysis that involved some 700,000 hours of television news and entertainment and 1.6 million Twitter posts over the month of March 2018. These were analyzed for a range of factors designed to reveal not just the number of Africa mentions but also their content and tone. Results confirm the argument that Africa is mostly ignored and widely stereotyped in the media when it does appear. Read the full report. Also: How Trump's Sh*thole Remark About Africa Affected Public Sentiment This report is an analysis of Twitter sentiment in the wake of news reports that President Donald J. Trump had characterized some African nations as “sh*thole countries." We worked with BrandsEye, a global opinion mining company, to analyze tweets for sentiment. |
