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Center Projects
The Nollywood Project
Young People's Videogame Uses in East Asia
The Billboard and Skin Shade Project
The Alternative Media and Social Movements Encyclopedia Project
The OurMedia/NuestrosMedios Project
The TeleVisions Project: TV Entertainment and 'Race'
- The Nollywood Project
Why research "Nollywood"?
Nigerian videofilms have had remarkable cultural and economic success, not only in Nigeria itself but across Africa, and are also intensively distributed in centers of Nigerian and African settlement in Europe and North America. Their huge audience success is in a different league from the mostly art films produced with the support of French cultural policy, or by the "development education" films produced by Western NGOs and broadcast on TV stations. They emerge from a truly indigenous film industry now attracting increasing attention globally, as well as from the Nigerian government's economic development policy-makers.
Very little systematic research has been published on the industry to date. A vital question is what roles does it play - and what roles might it constructively fulfill over time - in addressing some of the vital issues people face in many parts of the continent, such as health care, peace, justice, education and development. To date, it has tended to be "under the radar" of those who specialize in those topics, and thus to be apparently extraneous to their efforts. We beg to differ.
The videofilm industry's potential in Nigeria's economic development needs to be taken seriously. Quite often, producing the films has a multiplier effect in both urban neighborhoods and villages (e.g. paving roads, feeding crews, making costumes and ensuring adequate electricity at set locations). The consumer audience of Nigerian video films can be found not only in other African countries but also among transnational African communities in North America and Europe. These trading networks are a source of hard as well as soft currency flowing directly back into new productions in local economies.
There is a series of other dimensions to consider. One is the industry's potential for stimulating a good governance culture, particularly once members of Nigeria's established body of cultural activists in theatre and education begin to become involved in it more extensively. Another is these films' potential bearing on peace and conflict issues, whether linguistic, ethnic/national and/or confessional. Some actors are now learning Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba in order to work in these films, though English and Pidgin feature significantly too. Further, these films' distribution follows original geo-linguistic zones rather than colonial ones, with Yoruba films marketed in Benin and Togo, and Hausa films marketed in the Greater Hausa zone. Their audiences, moreover, also often overflow confessional boundaries, which might have still further implications for peace and nation-building processes.
How will we research Nollywood?
- Phase I will be a pre-pilot study, self-financed with minimal funds from the new Global Media Research Center at Southern Illinois University, and beginning in 2005.
- Phase II will be a systematic pilot study lasting six months, harnessing additional expert advice from outside the Center, and depending on basic funding from external sources.
- Phase III would be a thorough ethnographic and textual as well as economic analysis of the industry and its ramifications. At every stage collaboration would be sought with both industry professionals and academic researchers in Nigeria and selected other African nations.
The pre-pilot would ascertain a basic profile of these films' distribution patterns, through working with existing contacts in Lagos, Accra and in one U.S. city (probably Chicago): e.g. volume of current sales/rentals, price-range, distribution networks, most popular recent titles, languages used, genres, vendors' perceptions of typical purchasers (gender, age, class, nationality/ ethnicity). An initial archive of articles on the industry in the Nigerian and Ghanaian press would also be assembled via allafrica.com.
The Phase II pilot study would work more systematically in Lagos, Accra and the U.S. city selected, and would extend the study to Enugu, Kano, Niamey and Nairobi, enabled by the expertise and professional connections of our research team. It would be enriched by insights from the pre-pilot, but would pursue the same distribution-profile questions much more comprehensively. This phase would begin with an intensive 2-3 day working seminar at Southern Illinois University, bringing in 5-8 industry professionals, specialist academics and foundation officers from North America and West Africa. A priority to be explored in this seminar and the pilot would be potential linkages to economic growth, governance, health care, educational, peace and related major issues.
Phase III would consist of linked in-depth studies of reception and audiences, conducted ethnographically, and with particular reference to gender, class and ethnicity; of the production process; of the films' texts; and of the industry's multiplier effect. Each study would engage with the development issues already flagged. Evidently, the pilot studies would amplify and enrich both our concepts and research methods at this stage. We anticipate these studies would be conducted over a period of two years and would harness the energies of faculty and doctoral students at Southern Illinois University as well as selected faculty and students in the African nations involved.
This phase would conclude with a major conference, held in Nigeria and most probably in Lagos, to diffuse the results of the research, which would also be published on the Web as well as in traditional print form.
Who are we?
We are a group of faculty and graduate students involved with the Global Media Research Center at Southern Illinois University.
- The Center is located in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, but our academic affiliations are with the departments of Anthropology, Black American Studies, the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, and Theatre.
- Individually the professors among us are John McCall (Anthropology) and Segun Ojewuyi (Theatre), co-principal investigators. Dr McCall has several publications on "Nollywood" already, as well as substantial ethnographic fieldwork experience in Nigeria. Professor Ojewuyi, through his extensive Nigerian theatrical formation, is closely connected to the Nigerian theatre and education worlds and personally well acquainted with many of the leading figures in the videofilm industry.
- Other faculty involved are Professors Leo Gadzekpo (Black American Studies) and John Downing (Global Media Research Center Director).
- The doctoral and post-doctoral students among us are Dr Gado Alzouma (Anthropology), Christey Carwile (Anthropology), Joseph Oduro-Frimpong (Anthropology), Henry Kyeyune and Dorothy Njoroge (both College of Mass Communication and Media Arts).
- By nationality we are American, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Nigerian and Nigerien.
- Young People's Videogame Uses in East Asia
Currently two initial projects are underway. They are being conducted by SIUC College of Mass Communication and Media Arts doctoral students Cao Yong and Noh Kwang Woo on aspects of the videogame industry in the PRC and South Korea, respectively.
A particular focus of the research is on uses of these games by people +- 20 years old, of both genders. Additionally, trends in local videogame industry development are being studied, along with the competing influences of U.S. and East Asian videogame software.
- The Billboard and Skin Shade Project
This project is under development. It will initially involve a three-nation pilot project in Brazil, Egypt and India, examining the fairness-to-darkness spectrum in billboard advertising in all three nations. The prima face evidence is that the fairness end of the spectrum is overwhelmingly favored, especially in the depiction of women. With the help of locally organized focus groups we will explore the perceptions of these billboards among groups of young people +- 20 years old, of both genders.
- The Alternative Media and Social Movements Encyclopedia Project
This has been underway for some time, but with the foundation of the Center has been adopted as one of the Center's projects. It is under contract to Sage Publications Inc., California, and its editor-in-chief is John Downing. Its focus will be comparative and international, and primarily on the 20th and 21st centuries. It will principally be organized by approximate historical periods, e.g. 1900-1917, 1917-1933, and so forth, rather than in the strictly alphabetical mode common to encyclopedias, in order to provide a comparative and synoptic perspective on 20th and 21st century developments in this sphere.
It has an international advisory committee:
Chris Atton, Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland (general; anarchist history; internet)
Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, UNESCO, Brasilia (video; film; Latin America)
Nick Jankowski, Nijmegen University, Netherlands (new technologies; community media; Europe)
Chris Kamlongera, Southern Africa Development Corporation (popular theatre; Anglophone Africa)
Shuchi Kothari, Auckland University, New Zealand (dance; popular theatre; South Asia)
Vladimir Padunov, Pittsburgh University (Russia; Eastern Europe)
Sami Ramadani, London Metropolitan University ("Middle East")
Clemencia Rodriguez, Oklahoma University (feminist dimensions; Latin America)
Laura Stein, University of Texas, Austin USA (technologies)
Olivier Tchouaffe, University of Texas, Austin (cinema ; Francophone Africa)
Yuezhi Zhao, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver (Greater China; Canada)
Nabeel Zuberi, Auckland University, New Zealand (popular music)
- The OurMedia/NuestrosMedios Project
The OurMedia/NuestrosMedios Project has been in existence since 2001, and has held annual conferences then and since in Washington DC; Barcelona; Barranquilla, Colombia; and Porto Alegre, Brazil. Its upcoming conference in 2005 will be in Bangalore. The Center currently supports the translation of listserv postings regarding citizen media projects from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English. The address is www.ourmedianet.org.
- The TeleVisions Project: TV Entertainment and 'Race'
In 2002, the Ford Foundation funded a research team whose members at the time were based at the University of Texas, Austin, to do an initial study of 'race' and the Hollywood television industry, focusing upon the advocacy groups' activities, the professional guilds' projects, and the industry's responses, over the period 1990-2002. This is the report of that activity. The team is now dispersed through the universities of Oklahoma, Southern Illinois and Wisconsin-Madison, but is currently beginning to resume its research to carry it to the next stage. The pdf file attached here constitutes the report of the research project's findings in its first stage.
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