NEWS FROM AND IN THE "DARK CONTINENT" Afro-pessimism, news flows, global journalism and media regimes

The concepts news flow, global journalism/news and media regime are under theoretical construction. News media content is becoming increasingly deterritorialized, involving complex relations and flows across national borders and continents. Consequently, it becomes more difficult to categorize news in the traditional binary context as either national or international news as was the case with news flow studies since the mid-1990s. These changes are perhaps most evident in centres outside the global North, where rapid development of media infrastructures, coupled with political and social shifts as a result of widespread democratization since the mid-1990s, have brought about complex configurations of the local/global relationship in news. Global journalism/news is suggested as an alternative concept and the notion of media regimes is introduced as a way to interrogate assumptions about global news flows as it relates to Africa. A content analysis of TV news channels in three world regions was conducted to facilitate the analysis.