HEИндивидуална стипендия2023–2025

INFOSOC · East Africa's professionals in the making of our global information society

„Хоризонт Европа“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2023-09-01 → 2025-08-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 173 847 €
Участници: 3
Схема: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

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Накратко на български

Животът и работата на библиотекари, журналисти и техници от Източна Африка през 1960-те до 80-те години се анализират чрез архиви в Кения, Уганда и Танзания. Това помага да се разбере как се е формирало съвременното информационно общество в условията на неравенство и Студената война.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

East Africa's professionals in the making of our global information society

INFOSOC studies the lives and work of a group of East Africans who I call ‘information professionals’ – librarians, journalists, broadcasters, technicians – working in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The research undertaken serves as a route towards a better understanding of how the contemporary information society (as a concept and a lived reality) emerged in a setting of unequal global structures during the second half of the twentieth century. Information talk had high stakes in post-independence East Africa: discussing what ‘information’ meant, how to manage it, and how to gain from it was central to debates across many levels of society concerning expectations of independence and the role of the region in the precarious Cold War global order. During the 1970s, a group of non-aligned states, many of which had recently gained formal independence from European colonial powers, called for a ‘New World Information and Communication Order’. The movement’s spokespersons decried the monopolies over flows of news and information enjoyed by the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union, while Western powers accused it of propping up authoritarian regimes. Exciting new research on the topic is demonstrating the nuances, conflicts and significance of the many organisations and initiatives involved, but we still know relatively little about how these debates manifested outside of international conference halls. Focusing on professional lives, particularly training programmes, is a one way to understand the broader dynamics at play. Through a series of case studies using archives in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, this project will ask how East African information professionals contributed to the codification of information in disciplines like Mass Communication and Information Science, how they sought leverage between national, regional (East African), and international organisations, and how they understood their work in relation to global information politics.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

INFOSOC critically historicises our contemporary information society, demonstrating its global roots through original research into the lives of East African information professionals during a period of Cold War internationalisms (1950s-80s). To understand the persistence of information inequality, we need to place contestations over information in their socio-political contexts and historicise the social science disciplines that codified the meaning and power of information. This interdisciplinary project places information professionals (journalists, librarians, broadcasters, and government information officers) at its centre. How did trainers, trainees, and new professionals imagine and use what they called information and, crucially, with what consequences for our global information society? To answer this question, I will take my expertise in East Africa's global history into new interdisciplinary territory at a leading international institution for research on histories of mass communication, Freie Universitaet Berlin (FUB), under the supervision of an expert in the field, Dr Valeska Huber. Two substantial secondments in East African institutions, St Augustine University Tanzania (SAUT) and the British Institute in East Africa (BIEA), will enhance INFOSOC's innovative methodological basis and broaden its societal impact. Through a programme of training-through-research and a targeted communication and dissemination strategy, including a hybrid workshop organised in Berlin, the PF will allow me to pioneer a new sub-field of global information history and to demonstrate the pertinence of the East African case to academic audiences beyond African history, as well as to public audiences in Europe and East Africa. By the end of the PF, I will have established an independent research profile as a public-facing scholar with a research-driven teaching portfolio and a commitment to sustainable collaborations between European and East African institutions.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN · BerlinКоординаторГермания
SAINT AUGUSTINE UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA · NYEGEZIТанзания
THE BRITISH INSTITUTE IN EASTERN AFRICA LBG · LONDONОбединеното кралство