Includes bibliographical references and index (p. 282-288) and index.

Introduction -- The popular media sphere : theoretical interventions. De-westernizing media theory to make room for African experience / FRANCIS NYAMNJOH -- Revisiting cultural imperialism and its critics / P. ERIC LOUW -- At the crossroads of the formal and popular : convergence culture and new publics in Zimbabwe / WENDY WILLEMS -- Theorising development and democracy through popular community media / Victor Ayedun-Aluma -- Talk radio, democracy and citizenship in (South) Africa / Tanja Bosch -- Popular media, politics and power : engaging with democracy and development. Popular music as journalism in Africa : issues and contexts / WINSTON MANO -- Street news : the role of posters in democratic participation in Ghana / AUDREY GADZEKPO -- If you rattle a snake, be prepared to be bitten? : popular culture, politics and the Kenyan news media / GEORGE OGOLA -- Post-Apartheid South African social movements on film / SEAN JACOBS -- Audiences, agency and media in everyday life. The amazing race in Burkina Faso / H. LESLIE STEEVES -- (South) African articulations of the ordinary, or, how popular print commodities (re)organize our lives / SONJA NARUNSKY-LADEN -- Popular TV programmes and audiences in Kinshasa / MARIE-SOLEIL FRÔRE -- New technologies as tools of empowerment : African youth and public sphere participation / LEVI OBIJIOFOR -- Identity and community between the local and the global. Transnational flows and local identities in Muslim Northern Nigerian films : from Dead Poets Society through Mohabbatein to So? / ABDALLA UBA ADAMU -- Local stories, global discussions. Websites, politics and identity in African contexts / INGE BRINKMAN ... [et al.] -- Survival of "radio culture" in a converged networked new media environment / OKOTH FRED MUDHAI -- Policing popular media in Africa / MONICA CHIBITA.