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‘Pirate’ Radio, Convergence and Reception in Zimbabwe

This study is a product of an international collaborative research project on ‘Radio, Convergence and Development in Africa’, which was funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Carleton University’s Centre for Media and Transitional Societies. It was published in a special issue of Telematics & Informatics (30:3, 232-241) themed, ‘Radio and New Participatory Journalisms around the World: Understanding Convergence in News Cultures’, edited by Dr Last Moyo of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. The study sought to explore new media uses by ‘pirate’ radio stations and their audiences, and the potential impact such uses have in democratizing citizen participation in radio news and storytelling. It contributes to my wider ongoing research into media-based storytelling in the digital age.

As an empirically driven study (using qualitative in-depth interviews with audiences in Zimbabwe), the paper contributes towards the ‘de-Westernisation’ of scholarly accounts of how audiences are adapting to processes of convergence and digitisation and also offers insights for cross-cultural comparative research. The study offers alternative insights and perspectives into the question of radio reception in the era media convergence. It empirically demonstrates that any meaningful critique of emerging digital ‘storytelling’ techniques and cultures in radio must be grounded in particular socio-political and economic contexts. It is this point that radio stations broadcasting into Africa will need to take into consideration if their digital transmission platforms are to make significant qualitative inroads in the African communicative space.

The findings of this study were initially presented at two international events: at the ‘Joburg Radio Days Annual Conference’, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (27-29 July 2011), and at a roundtable on ‘Putting Communication for Development Research into Use’ organized by the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies (2 - 5 March 2012), where I was an invited speaker.