[Air-L] ​Call for Book Chapters: Creative Digital Cultures in Africa

[Chikezie E. Uzuegbunam]

*Call for Book Chapters*

*Creative Digital Cultures in Africa*



To be edited by:

Prof Priscilla Boshoff (Rhodes University)

Dr Bimbo Fafowora (Rhodes University)

Dr Chikezie E. Uzuegbunam (Rhodes University)



Possible publisher: Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, or Rowman and
Littlefield (we are in conversation with them).



*Synopsis*

African content creators have been quick to realise the affordances of the
digital sphere. In the face of crippling digital divides, social
inequalities, and political and economic instability, people across Africa
have actively embraced the potential of social media, in particular, as a
means to express themselves creatively to a range of ends. Yet, while
social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram command a
global stage, not to mention the lion’s share of research, very little is
known about how these platforms and the networked cultures they support are
harnessed by African digital content creators within local contexts.



In some ways, this lack of research reflects the paucity of scholarly
understanding of African popular “vernacular” creative culture and its
relationship to the digital sphere. This may be due to scholarly concerns
about pursuing critical topics that support a development agenda. For
example, a key area of digital research in the African context examines the
scope and implications of the digital “divide” or explores the relationship
between the digital sphere and gender relations or democratic participation
(Mano and Willems 2016). This proposal suggests that, while these topics
are important and necessary, a “virtuous” approach to digital content tends
to obscure the scope and nature of creative digital practice in Africa on
the social media coalface.



This is not to say that critical foci are not important—they certainly are.
But we suggest that by foregrounding creative digital practices, we might
come closer to understanding by what means African content producers put
social media to use for local ends. Situated at the “frontier” of African
social experience, creatives of the marginalised majority world “contest
taken-for-granted and often institutionalised bounded ideas engrained by
social norms and binaries of thought and practices of identity and
belonging” (Nyamnjoh and Brudvig 2017, 2
<https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?modgYa>). Through their creative work,
social media activities, and the kinds of content they produce, African
creatives expand ‘what is out there’ for us to encounter and consider.



Popular culture, specifically its digital manifestations, is recognised as
a primary means to articulate political resistance, social belonging, and
cultural identity. The conditions of coloniality that pervade the social
and political African landscape render this role particularly important.
Far from simply copying the dominant genres of the social media world,
African creatives adapt social media affordances to connect with and
reinvigorate African ways of knowing and social belonging, such as
community, family, and spirituality. The most “modern” of technologies
thereby becomes a vehicle for the translation (or recuperation) of African
forms of sociality that were supplanted by Western colonial social and
political formations (for example, the “public sphere” or “civil society”).
Yet, tied to globalised digital networks, African creatives are necessarily
co-opted into dominant platforms and their associated genres. This tension
between local meaning and global participation can be seen as a generative
force that demands more sustained scholarly attention.



*We call on digital media scholars to submit proposals that deal with the
following questions and themes:*



●      What are the contexts in which and for which African creatives
produce social media content?



●      What is the scope of African digital creative practice? What kinds
of content are deemed interesting or necessary?



●      How do African creative choices show us what is “at stake” in local
contexts?



●      In what ways does the creative digital work of African content
producers foster or otherwise promote African ways of knowing and being?



●      How do new modes of creative practice construct new forms of social
and cultural identity?



●      In what ways does African creative content stretch or reimagine
contemporary digital genres, and with what cultural, social, and political
consequences?



●      In what ways do African creatives work within and around the formal
constraints of global social media platforms?



●      How do African creatives work with, against, or around digital
infrastructural, geographical/spatial, and social inequalities and
marginalisation—and to what effect?



●      What strategies are used by African creatives to foster communities
of practice or affiliation in/for local and online contexts?



●      What measures do African creatives adopt to overcome algorithmic
invisibility/marginalisation?



●      How do African creatives respond to or otherwise manage attempts to
censor, silence, or shame them and their creative work?



●      How do African content producers protect their creative content?



●      How do African content producers leverage their creative work for
their own or others’ benefit?



●      Young people, social media influencers, and creative work in African
contexts



●      Digital labour, exploitation, and creative work in Africa



●      Platformisation, creative work, and its potentials and challenges in
Africa



●      Platform monetisation and creative work in African contexts



●      Nollywood and emerging interfaces with content creators and
skitmakers.



*Submission*: Please email your abstracts to the editors at:
creativedigitalcultures at ru.ac.za



*Timeline:*

Abstracts deadline: 31 October 2024

Communication of outcome: 30 November 2024

Full paper due: 31 March 2025



Note: No payment from the authors will be required.





Dr. Chikezie E Uzuegbunam (he/him)

Deputy Head of School (Ag.) & MA Programme Coordinator

School of Journalism and Media Studies

Rated Researcher, NRF-South Africa

Asst Editor, *African Journalism Studies*
<https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/recq21/about-this-journal#editorial-board>

*Latest book:* *Children & Young People's Digital Lifeworlds
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-51303-9>*.

*https://www.ru.ac.za/jms/ <https://www.ru.ac.za/jms/>*How to pronounce my
name:[image: A button for name playback in email signature]
<https://www.name-coach.com/chikezie-uzuegbunam>