1. Africa In American Media: A Content Analysis of Newsweek Magazine’s Portrayal of Africa, 1988-2006 By: Stella Maris Kunihira

2. Thesis/Purpose Owing to the misconceptions and misrepresentations of Africa in the international media, this paper analyzes American media coverage of Africa by examining the amount and type of coverage given to African news.

3. Brief Overview: Africa Size Nations Population Language Religion Culture Economy http://images.google.com/images

4. Previous Literature Media’s selection of Africa’s Images - Michira (2002); Hamilton (1998) - Misconceptions and Overgeneralization - Walker & Rasamimanana (1993 ) - Effects and Impact of Images on African and American people - Ken-Foxworth( 1985); al-Kaleem (2001); - Saint (1997); Dagne (2006)

5. Previous Literature Sources of Information - Wallace (1995); Allimadi (2005); Allen (1995) - What is always left out: Africa’s contributions and achievements - Olujobi (2005); O’Meara (1995)

6. Functional Theory Emile Durkheim (1858): society as a living organism Robert Merton (1910): Manifest and latent functionalism

7. Methods Content Analysis Data of analysis of Newsweek Magazine, 1988-2006 Random sample of 30 articles from 215 articles generated from EBSCOhost search Coding: to identify misconceptions and misrepresentations and how the readers are mis (informed) by the content.

8. Findings 24 articles on Africa and 6 others on non- African news Themes on Africa were divided into two categories Category 1: Crisis (N=14) Category 2: Non-Crisis (N=10) Category 3: other (N=6)

9. Findings Table 1: Crisis and Non-Crisis Themes Regarding African Nations Found in Newsweek Magazine, 1988 – 2006 (N=30) Crisis Themes f (/%) Non-Crisis f (%) Other f (%) Ethnic conflict4 (28%)Humanitarian assistance 5 (50%)Terrorism2 (33%) Disease 3 (21%) Women’s empowerment 2 (20%)AIDS2 (33%) War/foreign military involvement 2 (14%) Political achievement 1 (10%)Natural disaster1 (17%) Apartheid1 (7%) Religion1 (10%)Atomic bomb1 (17%) Terrorism1 (7%) Wildlife1 (10%) OTHER Wildlife, Poverty, Female circumcision 3 (21%) Total14 (47%) 10 (33%) 6 (20%)

10. Discussion Unequal representation of news coverage Persistence of stereotypical images Little attention to African achievements strong relationship between catastrophic events and humanitarian assistance

11. Questions