| Since the late 1990s, political democratization and new broadcasting technologies have transformed African countries' mediascapes. In addition to new private local television, broadcasters of transnational television officially gained access to African audiences. As such, transnational football (soccer) broadcasting became increasingly accessible to African football fans.;This study aims to understand and to explain how television broadcasting's political and technological changes in the late 1990s induced electronic colonialism in Francophone Africa. This qualitative study was conducted in Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Burkina, and Cameroon. It constituted at first the goal to achieve an understanding of the intricacies of football television broadcasting by public, private, and transnational television broadcasters. The in-depth interviews, documents analysis, and field observations provided required data to analyze transnational television broadcasting in Francophone Africa within the theoretical framework of Thomas McPhail's (2006) electronic colonialism.;Several significant findings emerged from this study. The main players in football television broadcasting are public and transnational television broadcasters. The newly installed private television broadcasters remain too economically fragile to compete for broadcasting rights. The economics of broadcasting rights (along with the access to satellite technology) give to European transnational television broadcasters---and media and marketing groups---a competitive advantage over local public television broadcasters. Consequently, media flows from Europe (and the one produced by Africans) are controlled by European media and marketing groups. What contributes to the control of the media broadcasting by European media and marketing corporations are the cultural and linguistic connections facilitated by African players in various French and European leagues, and the inherent cultural discount of football.;The study demonstrated how CanaSat Horizons and Canal France International (by supplying African audiences with French football programs and live games packaged with bartering) contribute to a French electronic colonialism of the Francophone Africa audience. The findings also reveal that the sponsoring of leagues and national teams by cellular corporations from the core and the semi-periphery in football introduced an additional player to the electronic colonialism through football in Francophone Africa. Although electronic colonialism cannot only be imputable to transnational football broadcasting, the findings of this research demonstrate that football broadcasting in Francophone Africa represents a pertinent case study of electronic colonialism. |
