CHINA’S IDEATIONAL MEDIA INFLUENCE ON PRESS FREEDOM IN AFRICA: AN EXAMINATION OF THE ROLE OF AGENCY IN THE GHANAIAN CONTEXT

This thesis explores China’s ideational media influence on press freedom in Africa. Specifically, it examines the impact of China’s increasing role in shaping the ideational and normative spheres in Africa through professionalization trainings. In the context of journalists and politicians, this approach involves near all-expenses-paid trainings on Chinese norms of governance, development, information control, and media approach in China. The study systematically seeks to undertake two important tasks. First, and using Ghana as an instrumental case study, it examines the role of the ‘agency’ of the Ghanaian journalists and politicians in localizing Chinese media norms in Ghana. Second, it determines whether the trainings, and the subsequent localization of Chinese media norms, undermine press freedom in Ghana.

The focus on Ghana is particularly interesting, because it has emerged as the top recipient African country of these Chinese professionalization media trainings. Having previously earned a fine reputation within the comity of nations as a beacon of democracy and a champion for press freedom in Africa, Ghana has witnessed a precipitous decline in the enjoyment of press freedom in the last decade. This is largely due to unprecedented attacks on independent journalists and media houses by state security apparatus, state appointees, and operatives of political parties. Questions are, thus, ripe over whether the worsening fortunes of press freedom could be an indication that the Ghanaian participants are practicing aspects of Chinese authoritarian media norms and practices in Ghana.

The significance of this study subsumes under two important backdrops. The first involves the fact that the media knowledge diffusion and skills transfer taking place during such trainings come on the heels of recent studies suggesting that the notion of a uniform African acquiescence to Chinese interests with little or no African agency is misleading. To this end, the role of ‘African agency’ in bringing China’s media influence on press freedom in Africa has been hypothesized at both the journalistic and political levels. The second relates to the gaping impact-nexus gap on the Chinese media trainings and press freedom in the China-Africa scholarship, and the need to bridge the gap.

The thesis argues that China is using the trainings to, inter alia, boost its partnerships, persuade about China’s image and norms, and present its models as alternative to Western models. Evidently, while the Ghanaian participants admit to drawing on their own agency to localize non-authoritarian Chinese media, political and development norms, they are reportedly not localizing the authoritarian aspects of Chinese norms. Especially, the politicians’ lack of such localization is due mainly to expected resistance from robust democratic institutions in Ghana, not a lack of interest. The findings of this study provide rich empirical insights into the resilience of a fairly consolidated culture of democracy and press freedom in Africa, against a systematic authoritarian cultural challenge from China.