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This edited collection is a cutting-edge volume that reframes political communication from an African perspective. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and occasionally drawing comparisons with other regions of the world, this book critically addresses the development of the field focusing on the current opportunities and challenges within the African context. By using a wide variety of case studies that include Mozambique, Zambia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, the collection gives space to previously understudied regions of sub-Saharan Africa and challenges the over-reliance of western scholarship on political communication on the continent.

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Part I: Conceptualizing Political Communication in the Digital Age.- 1. Key developments in Political Communications in Africa; Bruce Mutsvairo & Beschara Karam.- 2. Split: missing the master signifier in the role of the media in a democracy: the tension between the ANC and the media in South Africa; Glenda Daniels.- 3. Hashtags: #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall and the Cultural Politics of a Meme Event; Pier Paulo Frassinelli.- 4. The voice of the voiceless? The emergence of online radical discourses in South Africa; Lorenzo Dalvit.- 5. Agenda-Setting in Political Communication in the 2012 Presidential Runoff Elections in Sierra Leone: Change or Continuity in the Digital Age?; Ibrahim Shaw.- Part II: Emergent Narratives: Complex and Contradictory Attitudes Between Media and Politics.- 6. Friends or Foes? Political Communication and the NRM Government´s equivocal Relationship with Media Freedom in Uganda; Monica Chibita.-7. Intergenerational Political Change: Evolving Attitudes about Media and Press Freedom among Zambian Parliamentarians- Twange Kasoma and Gregory Pitts.- 8. Allies or Adversaries? : Exploring the uneasy relationship between the Jubilee government and Kenya´s media; Samuel Kamau.- 9. Communicating politics and national identity: the case of Mozambique Gisela Gon‡alves, & Stelia Neta.- Part III Online and Offline Mapping of Interactive Politics and Media.- 10. Digital media and political citizenship: Facebook and politics in South Africa; Tanja Bosch.- 11. Framing the Debate on ´Kagame III´ in Rwanda´s Print Media; Margaret Jjuuko.- 12. Us versus them: Exploring ethno-nationalist contestations in Nigerian political communication; Mercy Ette.- 13. Voices from below and above: Social networking sites, politics and democracy in crisis Zimbabwe; Mandlenkosi Mpofu.- 14. Romancing the media: A critical interrogation of political communication in presidential elections in Kenya; George Nyabuga, & Wilson Ugangu.- Part IV Local Politics in a Globalized World.- 15. Political Party Advertising and Electoral Politics in Zimbabwe: Mapping Contours of ´Glocalization´ in an Emerging Political Communication Culture; Tendai Chari.- 16. Interviews with Ivoirian Political Journalists: A Political Analysis of French Media Coverage and Influence During Cote d´Ivoire´s 2010-2011 Civil War; Jeslyn Lemke.- 17. Political Communication in Ghana: Evolving Trends and Implications for National Development; Africanus L. Diedong.

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Bruce Mutsvairo is Associate Professor in Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney.

Beschara Karam is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Science, University of South Africa.

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