Emerging South-South media flows: Chinese media in Africa

As emerging economies like China reshape the global order, transnational media flows are undergoing significant transformation, featuring flows within the traditional periphery in the Global South that do not necessarily pass through the traditional center of the West. Recent digital migration in sub-Saharan Africa has given rise to a burgeoning pay-TV industry. Amid this technological transition, a Chinese pay-TV provider StarTimes has become a major player with multinational operations in Africa. This dissertation looks beyond West-driven media globalization to explore emerging South-South media flows through the case of StarTimes. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from global media studies and media industry studies and insights from ethnographic fieldwork, the dissertation investigates the global-local nexus in transregional media flows, local linguistic and cultural politics in Africa, negotiation of market imperatives and national soft power, and inequalities in global television markets. The findings generate insights into local, national, and transnational characteristics of the South-South media flows. First, the Indigenous African language channels tap into local linguistic markets in East and West Africa through the approaches of pursuing attractive Indigenousness and gatekeeping unsuitable foreignness. Second, the private corporation plays a boundary-spanning role in promoting the Chinese media industry and soft power in Africa, and practices boundary conforming and negotiation to balance national soft power and market imperatives. Third, in navigating uneven global media industry structures and local cultural politics, television buyers promote alternative flows of international content from traditionally peripheral media hubs in the Global South to Africa. The imagined proximities articulated by professionals extend beyond traditional notions of cultural proximity to include transnational, phenomenological, and institutional dimensions, aligning with the notion of parallel modernity. The South-South media flows revealed in this study are multifaceted, complex, and ambivalent, as emerging media institutions and media exchanges present new opportunities for linguistic and cultural diversities in global media flows but also reflect new sets of power asymmetries.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Yin, FengYi

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Murphy, Patrick D.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Kogen, Lauren
• Baym, Geoffrey
• Uzuegbunam, Chikezie E.

• Communication
• Media and communication

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholarshare.temple.edu/handle/20.500.12613/12226

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/12226