‘Radio as usual’? Digital technologies and radio in conflict-Affected Burkina Faso

Abstract

This article identifies four new realities shaping the ways in which Burkinabe radio journalists deal with the insecurity threat that emerged in 2015 and the rise of terrorism in the region, all of which are related to digital technologies. First, digital technologies may symbolically strengthen the collective radio journalist-listener link; second, digital technologies are also tools that help journalists and audiences face the challenges of the new security situation; and third, digital technologies can represent risks to journalists and listeners. But this research also highlights, fourthly, that digital technologies can be inappropriate, and that the security context is creating a new modernity for former—more traditional—uses of radio. These realities indicate that digital technologies are integral to the appropriating and modernising process affecting traditional modes of listening and reception. Drawing on 37 interviews and three focus groups with Burkinabe community radio journalists in 2022, the article discusses existing literature in the Global North that highlights the significant disruptive effect of digital technology on radio both as a device, and in terms of broadcasting and listening practices, with it being suggested that traditional FM radio’s very survival is threatened. It finally shows that whilst digital technologies might sound a death knell for traditional broadcasting formats in the Global North, suggesting an ‘either/or’ situation, the situation differs in Burkina Faso, and therefore in other similarly affected conflict zones, where digital technologies reconceptualise the use of traditional radio without threatening it.