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Preserving Public Broadcasting Archives in the Digital Era: Circulatory Stories and Technologies, the Digital Turn, and the Return of the Past in West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

Flora Losch
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Abstract:

Broadcasting archives have been being digitized in West Africa since the 2000s. Their digital transfer, presented as both a solution to their decay and a necessary step to take them into the new century, presents considerable challenges. This article, while emphasizing the historiographical value of the archives as sources and traces, argues that the processes they undergo, which also participate in these technical objects’ afterlife, are connected to a long and circulatory history of cooperation in broadcasting. Located at the interface of past, present, and future, they also provide an opportunity to question certain geopolitical fracture lines, especially those of knowledge and memory.

Résumé:

Résumé:

Depuis les années 2000, les archives de la radiotélédiffusion sont numérisées en Afrique de l’Ouest. Cette migration numérique, présentée à la fois comme solution au problème de leur dégradation et comme étape nécessaire pour les emmener dans le nouveau siècle, pose des défis considérables. Cet article, tout en soulignant la valeur historiographique de ces archives en tant que sources et traces du passé, affirme que ces processus, qui participent également de l’après-vie de ces objets techniques, sont liés à une histoire longue et circulatoire de coopération en matière de radiotélédiffusion. Situés à la jonction du passé, du présent et du futur, ils donnent également l’opportunité de remettre en question certaines lignes de fractures géopolitiques, notamment celles de la mémoire et du savoir.

Type
Archives and the Digital Turn
Information
History in Africa , Volume 47 , June 2020 , pp. 219 - 241
Copyright
© African Studies Association, 2020

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