The Hubris of Good Intentions

This talk takes inspiration from Aymar Bisoka’s call for scholarship that pushes beyond colonial ways of knowing and moves towards justice-oriented analysis. To begin this shift, Wahutu will focus on how conflict in Africa is represented and theorized in the Global North - or minority world. Most analyses stop at the question of representation - examining why and how it is problematic. Wahutu is interested in a particular hubris among journalists and observers who assume conflicts need to be covered and tweak the narrative to make it feel more contextually accurate and nuanced. How does this allow us to theorize the perverse incentives among perpetrators of violence? And what happens when we think about the different forms of capital gained by both perpetrators of violence, and journalists and observers, from the coverage of these stories?

An expert on the sociology of media with an emphasis on genocide, mass violence and ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa, j. Siguru Wahutu has written extensively on global media patterns in covering genocide and the Kenyan media’s experimentation with social media platforms. His research has appeared in African Journalism Studies, African Affairs, the International Journal of Press/Politics, Global Media and Communication, Media and Communication, Media, Culture and Society and Sociological Forum. Wahutu is the author of In the Shadow of the Global North: Journalism in Postcolonial Africa.

Wahutu joins the Center from Yale, where he is an assistant professor in the University’s Sociology department and Council on African Studies. Wahutu is also a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center of Internet and Society and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of African Societies and Economies, both at Harvard University. Expanding the Center’s 2024 programming on platform accountability in Kenya, Wahutu will bring essential expertise on data privacy and media manipulation across sub-Saharan Africa.

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