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Embracing multiple Medialities, Reaching beyond the Academy: A focus on the Lagos ACC

Abisoye ELESHIN, University of LAGOS

The crux of African studies is to advance the scope and importance of issues surrounding the development of Africa through research. Means of disseminating research include scholarly journals, monographs and edited volumes, as well as stakeholder engagements. These platforms essentially speak to limited audiences – usually academic and policy related. The Cluster’s stance on the essence of medialities is to consider culture beyond textuality, and still not reduce it to the sheer materiality of data. It is important therefore, to consider all other modes of report dissemination.  At the Lagos African Cluster Centre, apart from the traditional textual report dissemination format, other platforms have been adopted to engage directly with the public, especially in the wake of COVID-19 lockdown which restricted movements and amplified digital engagements. Therefore, this proposal interrogates, in line with the concept of modalities, some of the dissemination dynamics deployed by Lagos ACC. Primarily, we will interrogate the efficacy and impact of the following (i)Social Media engagement, (iii)Photo exhibitions, and (iii) Documentaries. We seek to determine the role of the diverse media platforms and modes of analysis in expanding the scope of African studies research beyond academic and policy circles. We limit our consideration to Lagos ACC projects between 2020 and 2021. Since the essence of any research is to be able to solve emerging problems that have been identified within the society, the feedback from the public space is germane to the conclusion that would emerge from the research, hence the study will determine how effective these platforms have been in engaging members of the public in the African studies discourse.

Keywords: Dissemination Medialities Digital Engagements Modalities