Reginold Royston on New Orality in the African Mediascape
BCNM alum Dr. Reginold Royston recently featured on The Podcast Studies Podcast with Dario Llinares & Lori Beckstead to speak on his article, Podcasts and New Orality in the African Mediascape. In the episode, Dr. Royston and the hosts discuss the context of African podcasting, researching from diaspora identity, techn entrepeneurialism as a genre, and more!
From the episode:
I think in general we need to parochialize our experiences of the internet and the media ICT supply chain. I think we're always surprised by what's happening in China, and North Americans are really focused on the advancements that happen in the Digital North and the West and of course there's all kinds of things happening in the so-called developing world, or under-developed world, including Africa. But I think we're largely ignorant of how ICT works in Europe even. We just assume that it works the same. I think in terms of user culture, Europe is perhaps closer than to Africa in terms of a “pay-as-you-go” sort of practices. Structurally, what was interesting for me -- around 2011 I began to go to Ghana regularly, about every other year since then. When I'm there, I mean it took me a week to get my iphone callibrated to the different mobile phone networks. GSMA or GS is one of the radio relay systems that is mostly dominant in Europe or Africa, or CDMA is a download radio frequency system used in the United States for the most part. Now with 5G these things are going to go out the window, but it's still kind of determinative how your phone can port internationally: you have to go to Africa, you have to get a Ghana phone. Or you have to spend a week getting your phone essentially hacked to work in Ghana.
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Listen to the podcast or read the transcript here!