Nuances in the framing of Africa on German TV news from 1952 to 2018

Abstract

The article is a reflection on representations of Africa over an extended period after World War 2 in Germany, aimed at teasing out a more nuanced and balanced view than is at times suggested by accusations of blanket bias or representation in terms of a purported homogeneity of the continent and its people by Western media. Through an empirical semiotic analysis in terms of framing theory, the article identifies the frames used in Tagesschau coverage between 1952 and 2018, discusses the prominence of each frame and tracks it over time. The results reveal a challenge to binary assumptions that Western media is monolithically discriminatory and nuance-free, that framing of Africa has remained static, and that Africa has been represented predominantly as a homogeneous space in terms of simplistic narratives. Instead, the article supports the position that Africa and its people have predominantly been reflected on the show Tagesschau in various changing ways, connected through linguistic bias around assumptions about African leadership, which provides a complexity and nuance to the scholarship of representation.