The governmentality of journalism education in Ghana

Abstract

This study evaluates the role of two state regulatory regimes in shaping journalism education at a public university in Ghana. Focusing on the mandates of the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) and the National Accreditation Board (NAB), the work demonstrates how these institutions monitor, evaluate and shape the curriculum of the undergraduate program in communication studies at the University of Cape Coast. Based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the paper shows that the journalism program designed by both faculty and state regulatory regimes for the University of Cape Coast, as in many other universities in sub-Saharan Africa, is still primarily focused on media-centric, developmentalist and instrumentalist approaches, and pays little attention to critical theory and transcultural aesthetics. The fusion of these theoretical perspectives into the communication education curriculum is crucial for empowering students to unmask practices that perpetuate social inequality, dominance, power asymmetry and hegemony in society in order to transform it in positive ways.