Legrand, C. orcid.org/0000-0003-2473-1353, Paterson, C. and Wiegratz, J. (2023) Afro-optimism and progressive modernity: the Fintech story in the African press. Globalizations. ISSN 1474-7731
Abstract
This article offers a first analysis of representation in the African press of the fast-emerging amalgamation of online financial services popularized under the label ‘Fintech’. Authors conducted content analysis of selected African newspapers, deploying the concept of framing to examine how the Fintech story is communicated to news readers in Africa. Authors identified nine frequently apparent tropes in a sample of Fintech news and used these tropes to reveal dominant themes in news coverage. The sample of 386 pieces was drawn from multiple African news sources published between 2016 and 2021, a period characterized by rapid uptake of Fintech across the continent and by a global pandemic.
Findings suggests that the Fintech story in African newspapers is a predominantly positive, celebratory, and enabling narrative offering little critical reporting. News media examined demonstrate collaboration with the local/transnational finance sector to present a vision of progressive modernity and to reinforce afro-optimism and a techno-utopian discourse.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Africa, framing, Fintech, political economy, platform capitalism, racial capitalism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Nov 2023 10:40 |
Last Modified: | 13 Nov 2023 10:40 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/14747731.2023.2275816 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205177 |
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