Media and cultural representation: The symbolic appropriation of identity in West African Screen Media Noufou Ouedraogo To cite this version: Noufou Ouedraogo. Media and cultural representation: The symbolic appropriation of identity in West African Screen Media. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021, 10.2139/ssrn.3876717. hal-03303073 HAL Id: hal-03303073 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03303073 Submitted on 27 Jul 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Media and cultural representation: The symbolic appropriation of identity in West African Screen Media Noufou OUEDRAOGO, Research Assistant Ibn Haldun Unıversıty, Turkey
[email protected] o.noufou@ymaıl.com Abstract This article explores the portrayal of cultural identity in West African screen media, especially through television, cinema and visual advertising. It is exclusively an exploratory research which demonstrates that African cultural identity is essentially linked to its language, art, music, sculpture, as well as the use of local symbols. Hence, this study – which applies in essence a qualitative research design – is conducted in order to better understand the strategy of cultural depiction on West African media screens. As a result, the main objective is to demonstrate that national televisions and cinema really promote cultural identity in West Africa via visual symbolism.