School of Communication

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Browsing School of Communication by Author "Radoli, Lydia Ouma"

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    "Celebration of Faith": Experiences from African Diaspora Communities in Europe
    (2020-05) Radoli, Lydia Ouma
    This was presented at the Runder Tisch Afrika ( Round Table Africa ) Conference - a group of partners and Networks with links and work in Africa. The conference held in August, 2017 in Cologne- Germany was to share a discussion on experiences of African Diaspora Communities in Europe. The focus of the presentation is linking religious experiences in Africa to realities in Europe. The presentation provokes the concept of "reverse missions". Reflecting that once Europeans brought religion to Africa, but churches in Europe are nearly non-existent. The arrival of Africans in Europe creates a melting pot for re-evangelism.
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    Courting Trauma: An Unspoken Mental Health Crisis Among Journalists in East Africa
    (Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies, 2023-08) Radoli, Lydia Ouma
    For journalists covering trauma, capturing horrific images is part of the job. Each assignment feeds into the next, creating a cycle of witnessing horror. The story begins with getting the visuals, talking to witnesses, recording evidence, packaging, and relaying to the audience. The story is not worthwhile without visuals. However, every traumatic image captured is seared in the journalist’s cerebral cortex. In this delicate space, the images live and become part of the journalist’s internal memory. A silent companion, a constant reminder of the horror the journalist has witnessed - signaling a courtship of sorts. Using narrativity and in-depth interviews as qualitative methods, the paper situates the problem of a mental health crisis among journalists in East Africa covering traumatic events. Through in-depth interviews, narratives of journalists from Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda indicate a courtship with trauma in the line of duty. The journalists are contextualized as visual rhetors – engaged in the production and dissemination of horrific or difficult visual content. Frost (2019) describes visual rhetors as journalists who witness and produce visual frames of the dark side. This form of media practice produces images of violent conflicts. Learning from Visual Rhetoric and Dual Representation theoretical frames, the paper examines a correlation between visual rhetors ’exposure to horrific images and trauma. Arguing that visual rhetors’ multiple exposure to traumatic images in the production process causes trauma. The escalation of trauma as a mental health issue among visual rhetors is seldom talked about, yet it poses a mounting crisis that demands intervention.
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    “Rhetoric Vs Reality”: Confronting Difficult Truths in an Unequal Word through a Covid-19 Health-Care Lens
    (2020-10) Radoli, Lydia Ouma
    The onset of the novel corona virus in Wuhan China, December (2019) and sporadic spread across the globe revealed gaping differences in the health-care of the “have’s and have nots”. Early indicators of the virus were linked to 44 cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology from 31st December (2019) through 3rd of January, 2020. It was only on 7th January that the novel coronavirus strain was isolated in China (WHO 2019). From these early uncertainties, 282 cases of 2019-nCoV were confirmed on January 20th (2020). In the western world, the escalation of the virus nearly crumbled existing health-care systems. With current global infections placed at 23,260,16, the virus has caused 805,802 deaths, out of these, 15,811,003 have recovered (Worldometer, 2020). The virus continues to display vast social and economic inequalities globally, even as states grapple to look for a cure. In Africa, the complexity in late reporting of the first case of Covid-19 explains unvoiced disparities. The first country in Africa, Egypt for example, reported its first case on February 14th (2020) way after the virus had stabilized in China and was ravaging Italy and Spain. Even then, when African countries started reporting the presence of the virus in their territories, the numbers were comparatively low. It could be argued that Africa is far behind in testing. As countries garner efforts to deal with the Covid-19 threat, there are evident cracks in handling of the health crisis in global south vis a vie the north. On a scale of contrasts, in Africa alone, endowed individuals could easily access treatment, they can afford to install equipment and purchase protective gears to use at home, as communities in rural and informal settings stampede to get free masks and food handouts. These disparities, echo similar contexts on the global scene, challenging the United Nations philosophy for an equal world. On July 18th 2020, on the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis and widening global inequalities, the UN Chief Antonio Gutteres pointed out the need for social protection inclusive of universal health care and basic income (Aljazeera 2020). As countries in the west advanced stimulus packages to cushion citizens from economic shocks occasioned by Covid-19, in some African countries employees were asked to take pay cuts to soldier an escalating health crisis. Through a qualitative approach to document analysis, this paper interrogates existing global social-economic inequalities envisioned through a Covid-19 health-care lens. It argues that perhaps the UN philosophy of an equal world exists only as rhetoric, comparatively to present realities. Instead, what we experience is unequal world.
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    “White Terror and Ghosts of Kenya”: Postcolonial, Socio-Political Imagery and Narratives of Kenyan Diasporas
    (RAIS Conference Proceedings, 2019-04) Radoli, Lydia Ouma
    “White Terror” (2013), a BBC documentary details colonial atrocities in Kenya and thereafter state of emergency. I argue, ghosts (memories) of the atrocities still haunt a few remaining colonial survivors. Socio-political colonial structures were inherited in post-independence Kenya. The documentary based on Harvard’s History Professor Caroline Elkins (2005) research was evidenced in a legal suit of five colonial survivors against the British government for torture. Post-2007 ethno-political conflicts in Kenya can be linked to misappropriations in the 1954 Swynerton land tenure reforms. British occupation of native land sparked an insurgency that resulted in a state emergency (1952-1960), and later turned into struggle for independence. To Kenyans, Mau Mau (largely Kikuyus) were freedom fighters, but inhuman savage terrorists to colonial agents. Geographical annexing of land placed the Kikuyu, a dominant ethnic group close to the colonial capital, while the rest of the tribes were disbursed in the peripheries. In postcolonial Kenya, political and economic disparities herald power struggles between dominant ethnicities, in the case of Kenya; Kikuyu, Luo and Kalenjin. Postcolonial theory was a result of colonial experience, “the testimonies of the third world countries and discourses of minorities within geographical and political divisions of “East and West”, “North and South” (Bhabha 1994). First generational Kenyans survived colonialism, but retain narratives of the struggle over colonial domination. Using a postcolonial and discourse theoretic qualitative methodology for documentary and interviews analysis, this paper traces narratives of postcolonial Kenya and impacts on present day social political challenges.