Studying Media

The informants state that local media (internet, satellite stations, national TV and radio) does not address their real life concerns, and this section explores what these concerns are. There is a lacuna of stories relevant to women (which is teased apart in detail in Chapters Four and Five²³). Theorising conversations around media usage is equally problematic. At what point does a conversation become prompted by the media? A rhetorical question; there is no beginning or end point for the media, neither is there a beginning or end point for a conversation. The artificiality of the interview situation, or even the transitory moment of participant

observation, is a moment in time, and the research must be viewed with this in mind. The media is treated as being muddily involved with people’s lives, popping up here and there, interwoven within the context of many other practical, political, social and conceptual concerns, not as a linear dart cleanly penetrating a one-dimensional canvas of predictable routine.

95 Nominating when and at which point people become listeners, consumers or producers of meaning (Ang 1991 and Morley 1990) is clearly not possible. The informants are people with rich and diverse lives who sometimes listen to the radio, scour the internet, text their lovers, friends or family. Within the nominative hierarchy of consumer, listener and audience I do not imbue any one term with a higher value than others. However, with the rise of consumer agendas and the growth of market research, there is a temptation to link the notion of audience with that of consumer, or focus on consumption and everyday practices (De Certeau 1984, Sabry 2010, Asad 2009 ) and with that attach an implied inherent agency—albeit a rather contrived market agency—which is only to purchase. The other problems associated with using the ‘consumption’ lens for a radio

programme or pamphlet are the practical constraints of concentration and the fact that people are doing other things whilst they watch, listen or read the media (Ang 1991, Morley 1990.)

I argue that for this work, the decoding, (Hall 1980, 1997) interpretation or nominative hailing (Althusser 1970) is firmly taking place in social contexts which guide the conversations. In other words, the media takes second place to the more powerful forces of social acceptability and opprobrium, ‘fitting in’ and shame and reputations. Unlike Spitulnik (2000) and Schulz (1999, 2012) I do not accept that technology—the material physicality of the media, whether it was a radio or a laptop or an i-phone—is especially important for this study, rather it is the way that media embodies ideologies of status and modernity (Larkin 1999) and possibilities of change—metaphysical and actual (Slater 2008)—travel, fantasy and mobility (Archambault 2010, Baumann 2000).

I have determinedly avoided terms like ‘listening habits’ or ‘television preferences’ or ‘media discussions’, because defining a habit or preference suggests regular listening or a way of listening that incorporates other activities taking place at a particular time. Media discussions imply that the discussion is bounded, essentialised, neat, and only concerns media, which is not the case here.

The message or meaning of this media is not a single directed one (Hobart 2002), and language is never a transparent vehicle or conveyor of meanings, as many analysts have established (Ang 1991). The ‘gaze’—the view from which one stands

96 (Radway 1994, Columpar 2002)—both as consumer (or audience, or informant) and author, and the positionality of the author must be dissected and laid bare.

Almost all my interviews were conducted in Swahili with a translator present.

The interviews were recorded, although inevitably meanings and nuances have been lost or misread in translation. As the study progressed, I began to actively seek out patterns and repetitions in themes, replication and order, and this is a contrived process. The results of interviews are so varied, complicated and diverse that inevitably in order to impose order I have had to accept this process, which is an artificial construct, or jettison the idea of a cohesive body of research. I have chosen the former.

I cannot categorically argue for a process of understanding what the media is, or does, for these informants. I cannot talk of ‘identification’ either of the actual audiences or of identification and understanding between my informants and the media, or between the informants and myself, as this suggests a fixed sense of identity that is acted upon, brought into being by the act of experiencing the media. So, whilst the paucity of language will probably lead me to use words such as ‘identity’, it’s done with the caveat of knowing that the hypodermic ‘cause-effect’ model of watching, receiving and discussing (with me or others) can in no way be satisfactorily described as identification. Similarly I use words like

‘representation’ or ‘discourse’, knowing well that however much they fail me, they will have to do.

To argue that there is a substantial ‘essence’ (of an individual, a group or an opinion) that can be arrived at, or a ‘window’ that can be viewed through (which somehow privileges the anthropologist with her extra special ability to see or know Moore 2013) is patently erroneous. Equally, arguments around representation and ventriloquism (Ferguson 2002) cover similar territory. There is no way I am

representing informants or their opinions, instead I am writing down a version of a moment in time when they were saying or expressing a particular idea. And what I write is my understanding and interpretation of it. It’s not just that language or metaphors fail us, it’s that we are forced to face the inadequacies of our own subjectivities and the restrictions of reflecting and describing what we see, hear,

97 touch and feel around us—let alone what our informants see, hear, touch, and feel.

As TS Eliot eloquently puts it:

And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion.

- Eliot, Four Quartets (East Coker) 1969