How Africa is Shining a Spotlight on the Faults of Humanitarian Communication

Africa seems to be the target of humanitarian communication’s downfalls and Annas (1997) highlights its consistent depiction: “In general, war, famine, racial conflict, abuse of power, corruption and a lack of planning characterise the image of Africa.” Africa’s portrayal is overwhelmingly negative and its identity lies in the issues it faces rather than what it has to offer or the value of its people. In many ways, the continent is a microcosm for the issues at the centre of development media. This piece will explore how, through looking at Africa’s media representation, we can understand and contextualise key conceptual issues at the heart of humanitarian communication.

POVERTY PORNOGRAPHY:

Poverty Pornography is a technique used in humanitarian communication and most commonly in charity and NGO campaigns. The key objective is to invoke feelings of ‘guilt and pity’ through using explicit and graphic images of the effects of poverty (Cameron and Haanstra, 2008). This picture, part of a Save the Children campaign, clearly depicts poverty pornography. The charity has numerous long-term appeals and emergency response schemes in Africa, and employs such images to provoke quick monetary responses from western citizens. This in itself raises questions of morality over capturing suffering for financial purposes.

The Wider Consequences

This particular image aims to create a personal connection with those who see it – the hand reaching out acts as a cry for help to which people are expected and compelled to respond. However, Cohen (2001) states, “The powerful north wants to know and possess the submissive south.” This is reflected in this picture of a ‘helpless’ African child which plays on the ‘white saviour’ complex. Through responding to this campaign, westerners feel as though they have a degree of power that people like the child pictured do not. It raises the question – is there ever a selfless good deed?

Furthermore, the extensive issues raised by poverty pornography are universal, spanning across humanitarian communication culture. These images may also fuel compassion fatigue - a decreased sense of empathy and compassion from western populations towards the other countries due to “the repeated use of the same disaster narratives in the media” (Scott, 2014). The multitude of explicit ‘poverty pornography’ images has created an immunity towards the suffering of those in developing countries and therefore decreased campaign effectiveness.

CELEBRITY HUMANITARIANISM:

Celebrity humanitarianism is another promotion technique, which again aids Africa’s negative image and stereotype. Brockington and Henson (2015) use the umbrella term ‘celebrity advocacy’ for a variety of activities that aim to raise awareness or money for a particular cause. The image shows Madonna in Malawi as part of her charity ‘Raising Malawi’; it demonstrates the issues associated with celebrity advocacy. It’s as if Madonna is holding the child at arm’s length and the angle at which she is kneeling makes it seem as though she is ‘above’ the children, not only literally but also hierarchically. Her charity supports children through the sectors of health, education and community development, yet her interaction with the children in this picture depicts Madonna as the ‘saviour’ amongst a sea of African children.

Motives and Morality

Although not intentional, it does reflect a lot of popular concerns about celebrity involvement in humanitarian communication in terms of the agenda or motives behind charitable actions. Brockington and Henson (2015) emphasise this by saying it would be wrong to believe that celebrity humanitarianism is purely for selfish gain, however “the celebrity can often do better out of this attention than their causes.”

Brockington and Henson (2015) carried out interviews as part of their research and one interviewee suggested that surely if by using celebrity humanitarianism you raise money for a cause in need, then the motive is unimportant? On the other hand, is it ethically ok to use a celebrity to draw attention to issues in countries such as Africa at the expense of, for example, Malawi’s image and portrayal to Western citizens? It is likely that these sorts of campaigns exacerbate the issue of Africa’s predominantly negative characterisation.  

MOVING FORWARD

Africa’s negative representation within western media is bound within a web of

intricacies. Yet this is true for many other areas of the developing world. Humanitarian communication has the power to raise awareness and shed light on important global issues, yet this comes with the responsibility of shaping people’s knowledge and opinion which can quickly be negatively manipulated. As long as media continues using its current methods, it will be difficult to shift and change the stereotypes that characterise places such as Africa.  

 Bibliography:

Annas. R., 1997. News flows out of Africa: are Western media striving for excellence in communication standards? ECQUID NOVI, 18:2, pp196-208, DOI: 10.1080/02560054.1997.9653203

Brockington. D, Henson. S., 2015. Signifying the Public: Celebrity advocacy and post-democratic politics. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 18 (4), pp431-448.

Cameron.J, Haanstra.A, Development Made Sexy: how it happened and what it means. Third World Quarterly. 29 (8), pp1475-1489.

Cohen, S., 2001. States of Denial. s.l. Cambridge:Polity Press.

Scott, M., 2014. Media and Development. London: Zed Books Ltd.

Pictures:

http://www.wbur.org/npr/439162849/at-what-point-does-a-fundraising-ad-go-too-far

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/11/showbiz/malawi-madonna-feud/index.html