Media cities : mapping urbanity and audiovisual configurations

Abstract: The prime research question of this special issue of the Journal of African Cinemes focusses on the urban configuration of cities as media hubs. Placed within the broad research agenda of developing “systematic analyses of trends [...] in South African ‘media cities’” (Tomaselli 2013), the issue offers case studies of selected Southern African cities as both home to media production, distribution and exhibition as well as the subject of media imaginations. In line with this, the overall focus of the study is on mapping urbanity in an African context by analysing media environments and audiovisual configurations of cities from both textual and contextual perspectives. This case study research design constructs the respective media cities examined as single units while remaining attentive to how these developments relate to similar cities outside the case studies under investigation