Course convenor: Dr Wendy Willems

This course offers a comparative perspective on changing national media cultures in the Global South in the context of the neoliberal turn. The course not only considers neoliberalism as a crucial factor that has brought media industries such as private broadcasting stations, mobile phone companies and digital platforms into existence but also examines the extent to which these new forms of media and technology have played a role in reproducing neoliberalism as a process. It provides an understanding of how shifting economic policy regimes have impacted on the way in which people engage with media and technology, and how media and technology engage with people in the Global South.

The first part of the course introduces the key concepts of ‘media culture’, ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘Global South’ which will be deployed throughout the course. The second part of the course discusses how key processes of social change in the Global South are linked to changing media cultures, including the commodification of national imaginaries, informality, crime and the rising middle class, religion and the prosperity gospel, self-help media and the neoliberal subject, and mobility and social relations. The course examines these themes through a series of empirically-grounded, mostly ethnographic case studies. The course encourages students to critically evaluate the extent to which the three key concepts in the course are helpful in gaining an understanding of changing media cultures in the Global South.