1. Local Views and Global News: Practices of News Photography in Nairobi, Kenya.
- Author
-
Kautsky, Robert
- Subjects
PHOTOJOURNALISM ,PHOTOJOURNALISTS ,PHOTOGRAPHY ,CURRENT events education - Abstract
Photojournalists, as producers of news imagery, are a group of media producers key to our understanding of current events, yet how they produce the images we see in the news is little studied. In this paper I present the results of ethnographic interviews and participant observations made in Nairobi in 2007-2008 with the aim to map and describe practices of production of news imagery mainly from a photographers' point-of-view. As international photo agencies (AP, AFP, Reuters and others) are part of today's large media conglomerates, the photographers working for them can be seen as important agents of cultural globalization, forging links between here and there, allowing readers to sit comfortably at their kitchen tables or at their computer reading the news while experiencing being there at least in some sense. But the same is also true for more locally based photographers, who are also involved in managing meaning across varying social and geographical spaces. The research project examines the organizational contexts within which professional photojournalists work, touching upon the institutions as well as the distribution system, and key agents managing and controlling access to that system. By centering the research on media production in Africa, it has the potential to investigate both local and international relations in today's increasingly (but unevenly) global media system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009