Media Representations of the African Diaspora in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2004-2021: An Africana Studies Approach

Abstract

This thesis is an enquiry into the media representations of the African diasporic community in Aotearoa/New Zealand using the theoretical and methodological approaches of Africana Studies, a framework for the investigation of anti-Black racism globally. For this study, ‘African’ is deemed to be Black African and excludes non-Black former residents of Africa who have migrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand, such as white South Africans and white Zimbabweans. Africana Studies understand that the Black experience of racism and oppression is a shared, rather than individual, experience (Bassey, 2007). This thesis foregrounds the views of African media makers, public figures, creative producers, artists, and ordinary African people living in Aotearoa/New Zealand on how media representations affect the African diasporic community, what responses they have devised to misrepresentation, and what solutions they believe might be available. This thesis also analyses about 210 mainstream media articles about the African diasporic community in the New Zealand media which were published over a 17 year period. This analysis uses Critical Race Discourse Analysis (CRDA) which exposes the discursive reproduction of racism in text and talk. This thesis is the first piece of research in Aotearoa/New Zealand to analyse mainstream media representations of the African diasporic community over a long period of time. It concludes that the discursive media emphasis has, between 2024 and 2021, depicted the African diasporic community in Aotearoa/New Zealand as refugees, migrants, criminals, victims, and conduits of HIV/AIDS. The mainstream media also terminates meaningful discussion of racism in society, continues to depict Africans in New Zealand as refugees (not migrants or people from a refugee background) and supports benign settler colonialism or “racial paternalism” (Shilliam, 2011, p. 89), also known as “racial revisionism” (Winant, 1992, p. 175). The thesis investigates how white normativity in the mainstream media in Aotearoa/New Zealand continues to suppress and put obstacles in the way of open discussions about racism and authentic biculturalism and true partnership with Māori. This in turn relegates the African diasporic community to a marginal position. Finally, this research urges the establishment of a process to decolonise the public and commercial media in Aotearoa/New Zealand.