National Media Assignment

Each student will be assigned a country from the developing world. (Ghana)

1. You must research how that State (Ghana) has used at least two media platforms to promote a shared national identity among its citizens as well as how it has attempted to manage competing and/or dissenting national visions. You may choose among radio, television, film, newspapers, telecommunications, the internet, and social media.

2. Please consider the unique dimensions of each medium in terms of the opportunities and challenges it presents for helping foster a national imaginary.

3. Please explore the political economic dimensions of these media outlets (who owns them? who pays for them? how are they regulated? how large is their reach? how much competition do they encounter?, etc.) and assess how their embeddedness within political and economic systems shape the types of national narratives that might be told?

4. Finally, please identify a minority national group within the host state and explore how the state has attempted to incorporate them into the national narrative through media as well as how that group has used alternate media outlets to circulate its national imaginings.