“Don’t Hesitate to Take Decisions Against France and the UN”: A Content Analysis of Anti-French Sentiment in Local Côte d'Ivoire Newspapers

Abstract

This study is a content analysis of five local newspapers published during Côte d'Ivoire’s national election crisis in 2010–2011, where journalists working in the partisan press wrote about France’s ongoing military interventions in the presidential crisis. I examine how the role of France is framed in the four months of the electoral turmoil, as well as other emerging frames in the dataset. Because four francophone African nations (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea) have seen coups d’état since 2020, in which anti-French sentiment and the rejection of French embassies or militias have played an enormous role, a new examination of how the press in francophone Africa conceptualizes the role of France seems very important in this present era. Therefore, I examine how Ivorian journalists during Côte d'Ivoire’s civil war framed the involvement of France in the election crisis. Is the model of journalism practiced in francophone Africa traditionally suggested by media scholars still applicable? Results show the media in Côte d'Ivoire still falls well within their definition. As a theoretical contribution, this paper argues for a new model of journalism in francophone Africa which measures the degree of French media coverage/French politicians cited within an African news outlet. In contextualizing our understanding of journalism in francophone Africa under the mantle of postcolonial theory, this model creates a better template for gauging the present anti-French sentiment surging through Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea, as they all share a similar colonialist legacy with Côte d’Ivoire.