The political economy of sponsored call-in radio in Zambia

This working paper provides a context for the assessment of hopes that there might be a transformation in political accountability in Africa as a result of previously powerless and voiceless populations having their agendas strengthened via interactive media. It describes the ways in which many radio programmes, on which the voices of audience members are heard live on air, are brought into being through the ‘sponsorship’ of groups that already have significant power and voice. These include political parties, foreign aid donors, and local and international Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), all of which have incentives to use interactive media as a tool of evangelism – to secure public engagement with, and endorsements for, their preferred visions. Using the case of Zambia, it emphasises the negotiating strategies that journalists and station owners deploy to secure resources while maintaining space to allow hosts and audience members, rather than solely sponsors, to shape the agenda of on-air discussions

The political economy of sponsored call-in radio in Zambia

This working paper provides a context for the assessment of hopes that there might be a transformation in political accountability in Africa as a result of previously powerless and voiceless populations having their agendas strengthened via interactive media. It describes the ways in which many radio programmes, on which the voices of audience members are heard live on air, are brought into being through the ‘sponsorship’ of groups that already have significant power and voice. These include political parties, foreign aid donors, and local and international Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), all of which have incentives to use interactive media as a tool of evangelism – to secure public engagement with, and endorsements for, their preferred visions. Using the case of Zambia, it emphasises the negotiating strategies that journalists and station owners deploy to secure resources while maintaining space to allow hosts and audience members, rather than solely sponsors, to shape the agenda of on-air discussions

Let’s Be Responsible Citizens! Contesting the agenda of a sponsored call-in radio programme

This working paper considers in detail how the hosts of and listeners to one call-in radio programme in Zambia were influenced by, resisted and co-opted the agendas of the sponsor that paid for its production. It develops a detailed case-study covering fifteen episodes of, ‘Let’s Be Responsible Citizens’, broadcast on Phoenix FM in Lusaka in late 2011 and right through 2012. It shows how the original aspirations of the show’s sponsor, Lusaka City Council, can be understood in terms of nurturing popular subjectivities that might enable the state to impose market solutions to the provision of social goods. The Council hoped that this might in turn have enabled them to survey and bring a particular kind of order to the unruly spaces of the capital city. The Council also aimed to evangelise a model of city governance that shifts power away from the dense networks of representative political structures that exist in the city towards consensus-oriented, technocratic modes of assessing social needs and distributing resources. However, the programme struggled to attract audience participation in episodes framed in these ways and, in accepting that they needed to bring the show closer to the concerns of the listeners, the Council enabled the host and callers to ‘Let’s Be Responsible Citizens’ to subvert the show’s original intentions. Negotiations over the show’s agenda provide a window on how debates about political accountability, legitimate authority and who has the responsibility to meet social needs play out in increasingly media-saturated societies

The Political Economy of Sponsored Call-In Radio in Zambia. PiMA Working Paper #5

This working paper provides a context for the assessment of hopes that there might be a transformation in political accountability in Africa as a result of previously powerless and voiceless populations having their agendas strengthened via interactive media. It describes the ways in which many radio programmes, on which the voices of audience members are heard live on air, are brought into being through the ‘sponsorship’ of groups that already have significant power and voice. These include political parties, foreign aid donors, and local and international Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), all of which have incentives to use interactive media as a tool of evangelism – to secure public engagement with, and endorsements for, their preferred visions. Using the case of Zambia, it emphasises the negotiating strategies that journalists and station owners deploy to secure resources while maintaining space to allow hosts and audience members, rather than solely sponsors, to shape the agenda of on-air discussions

Technology Adoption And Pest Control Strategies Among UK Cereal Farmers: Evidence from Parametric and Nonparametric Count Data Models

This paper examines technology adoption and integrated pest management strategies employed by UK farmers, using both parametric and nonparametric methods. We employ a unique survey data set collected from UK cereal farmers to assess the determinants of technology adoption in relation to pest management. Our preferred model specification is nonparametric which makes use of the recently developed methods of Li and Racine (2007) and Racine and Li (2004). These methods allow us to combine categorical and continuous data and thereby avoid sample splitting and resulting efficiency losses. Our analysis reveals that total area farmed is positively related to the number of technologies adopted, whereas age is negatively related. We also find evidence of significant statistical differences for number of adoptions by region across the UK.technology, adoption, cereal farming, UK, nonparametric

Integrated Pest Management Portfolios in UK Arable Farming: Results of a Farmer Survey

BACKGROUND. Farmers are faced with a wide range of pest management (PM) options which can be adopted in isolation or alongside complement or substitute strategies. This paper presents the results of a survey of UK cereal producers focusing on the character and diversity of PM strategies currently used by, or available to, farmers. In addition, the survey asked various questions pertaining to agricultural policy participation, attitude toward environmental issues, sources of PM advice and information and the important characteristics of PM technologies. RESULTS. The results indicate that many farmers do make use of a suite of PM techniques and that their choice of integrated PM (IPM) portfolio appears to be jointly dictated by farm characteristics and Government policy. Results also indicate that portfolio choice does affect the number of subsequent insecticide applications per crop. CONCLUSIONS. These results help to identify the type of IPM portfolios considered adoptable by farmers and highlight the importance of substitution in IPM portfolios. As such, these results will help to direct R&D effort toward the realisation of more sustainable PM approaches and aid the identification of potential portfolio adopters. These findings highlight the opportunity a revised agri-environmental policy design could generate in terms of by enhancing coherent IPM portfolio adoption.Pest management; pesticide alternatives; technology and portfolio approaches;

The Limits of Governmentality: Call-in Radio and the Subversion of Neoliberal Evangelism in Zambia

The spread of mobile telephones in Africa has enabled a broad range of citizens to join live conversations on call-in radio shows. Both African governments and foreign aid agencies claim that broadcasting such debates can raise awareness, amplify the voices of the poor, and facilitate development and better governance; they now fund a large share of interactive shows in some countries. Critics of such participatory initiatives typically accept that they have powerful effects but worry that debates among citizens are deployed as a technology of “governmentality”, producing forms of popular subjectivity compatible with elitist economic systems and technocratic political regimes. This article argues that instrumentalising political debate is harder than either side assumes, and that the consequences of these shows are mainly unintended. It develops an in-depth case of a Zambian call-in radio programme, “Let’s Be Responsible Citizens”, emphasising the ability of the show’s audience, and its host, to subvert the programme’s surveillance and governmentality agenda, and to insist that the key responsibilities of citizens are to criticise, rather than adapt to, policies and systems of governance that do not meet their needs

An investigation of the phenomenon of diapause in the larva of Lucilia caesar L. (Diptera : Tachinidae)

Abstract Not Provided

Some aspects of the molecular structure of heterocyclic and organometallic compounds

Various rules which have been used to rationalise molecular geometries are discussed. After this the results from MNDO calculations on simple carbenes, ethers and amines are presented, and these were designed to test the hypothesis that in the presence of ligands of low electronegativity lone pairs would not fulfil their stereochemical role assigned to them in the VSEPR model. Following on are MNDO calculations on cyclic molecules: the cyclopentadiene ring is planar in silylcyclopentadiene and non-planar in trimethylsilylcyclopentadiene. The calculations attempt to resolve this and in addition the nature of the fluxional exchange. The intermediates which are formed by diazepinium salts when they are protodebrominated are then discussed in the light of MNDO calculations. Single crystal x-ray work was carried out for four heterocyclic molecules. The compounds reported are: 4-phenyl-3-phenylamino-1,2,4-thiadiazolin-5-one; 5-(N-methylthiocarbamoylimino)-4-phenyl-3-phenylamino-4H-l,2,4-thiadiazoline; N,N-bis[2-(5-t-butyl-3H-1,2-dithiol-3-ylidene)ethylidene]hydrazine and N,N-dimethyl-N-[2-(5-t-butyl-3H-1,2-dithiol-3-ylidene)ethylidene]hydrazine. Details of MNDO calculations which were undertaken on molecules related to the x-ray work are then presented, and in the final chapter a discussion of the heterocyclic crystal structures appears. The first appendix reports the structure of a macrocyclic ligand, the second provides a list of publications and the third appendix is a list of the structure factors, least-squares planes and anisotropic temperature parameters for the crystal structure determinations