Beyond Text : Institutions and Print Mobilities in Colonial Nigeria

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Edeagu, Ngozi:
Beyond Text : Institutions and Print Mobilities in Colonial Nigeria.
2021
Event: Colonial and Postcolonial Print Mobilities: Black Periodicals and Local Publications, 1880-Present , December 4 & 5, 2021 , Newcastle University & Yale Macmillan Center Council on African Studies (online).
(Conference item: Workshop , Paper )

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In colonial Nigeria, non-elite groups used non-violent modes of protest to challenge colonial authority. These “non-disruptive modes of protest” (Alozie 2019) included newspaper publications. Specifically, the West African Pilot newspaper became an important textual tool in the anticolonial movement in Nigeria. Consequently, it " made commoners actors in the theatre of politics and enlarged the demography of politics," (Taylor 2003) "helped to shape mature, engaged media consumers," (Newell 2015) possessed the "power to convene people in new ways” (Peterson and Hunter 2016) and engendered “circular discourse” (Glassman 2000). Nonetheless key scholarship on the transatlantic print media landscape (von Eschen 1997; Polsgrove 2009; James 2015) have emphasized “the lives, actions and contributions of ‘a few good men’” (Geiger 1996) while understating the role of the African majority acting through organized institutions in the process. My paper will investigate the role of institutions (such as colonial secondary schools and ethnic-based associations) in the diffusion of newspaper “ideas, information and directives” (Hodgkin, 1956) locally and across the Atlantic. Thus, this research will help scholars understand that the impact of print media extended beyond text and towards strategies of dissemination.