#someonetellcnn: The Agonistic Relationship between South and North Media Memories
#someonetellcnn: The Agonistic Relationship between South and North Media Memories

Summary/Abstract: The international media stand accused for creating a negative retrospective memory about Africa through misreporting. Social media is providing an alternative channel to air counternarratives. Through Discourse Theoretical Analysis this paper uses the agonistic democracy theory to explain how Twitter is enabling Kenyans to create an optimistic prospective memory as a counter narrative to Western media’s negative retrospective memory about Africa. Mouffe’s concept of “agonism” will be utilized to conceptualize how uncivil attacks are enabling Kenyans to fend off international media misreporting. The paper unpacks how Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) used incivility against CNN to to create a national agonistic memory ahead of the 2015 Africa visit by President Obama. The paper analyses incivility at #SomeonetellCNN as a form of collective remembrance, meaning not only remembering what CNN had already said, the retrospective memory, but also remembering what CNN was expected to do, the prospective memory.

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