Reinventing television in rural Zambia
- 12 April 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
- Vol. 22 (4), 440-460
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856516641660
Abstract
During the past decade, digital distribution has brought about major changes in the ways that states regulate, corporations profit from, and people consume media content in places around the world. These technological and industrial shifts have also catalyzed an important area of inquiry in media studies, leading to investigations of ‘connected viewing’ defined by Holt and Sanson as a ‘broader ecosystem in which digital distribution is rendered possible and new forms of user engagement take shape’. Most scholarly research on connected viewing has focused on postindustrial contexts in North America, Europe, and East Asia. Few have considered these practices in developing contexts such as rural sub-Saharan Africa, where energy infrastructure is underdeveloped and media devices are scarce. Adopting a user-centered approach, this article situates the concept of connected viewing in rural Zambia and explores how remote communities with very limited resources access and produce media content across various platforms. The research is based upon 6 weeks of fieldwork in Macha, Zambia, in 2012 and 2013. It begins with a descriptions of the ways people energize media devices in Macha and proceeds to a discussion of three exemplary connected viewing scenarios: (1) the daisy-chaining of satellite TV services, (2) the streaming of YouTube videos, and (3) the production and distribution of local music video. Far from a model of ‘video on demand’ typical in most postindustrial settings, Machan distribution practices generate more occasional, collective, and limited experiences of television that are scaled to local capacities, enabled by an amalgam of technologies, and frequently interrupted by power outages and network failures. Despite this, underserved rural Zambian audiences are pushing connected viewing practices forward in ways that the region’s telecom and media companies are not by innovating cross-platform tactics for (re)distributing audiovisual content in conditions of energy, bandwidth, and economic scarcity.Keywords
This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- Signal TrafficPublished by University of Illinois Press ,2015
- Distribution RevolutionPublished by University of California Press ,2014
- Rethinking RepairPublished by MIT Press ,2014
- Connected ViewingPublished by Taylor & Francis Ltd ,2013
- Participation – In what? Radio, convergence and the corporate logic of audience input through new media in ZambiaTelematics and Informatics, 2013
- Invisible UsersPublished by MIT Press ,2012
- Liberalization, regulation and privatization (LRP): Telecommunication reform challenges in ZambiaPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2011
- Transmedia TelevisionPublished by Taylor & Francis Ltd ,2011
- Broadcasting Reforms in Southern Africa: Continuity and Change in the Era of GlobalisationWestminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 2007
- Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous MediaCultural Anthropology, 1994