Still the Distant, Exotic Other? The Cultural Conceptualization of Africa in Hungarian Online News

Visual images are often used as powerful tools to foster cross-cultural understanding as they are capable of forming people’s perception and conveying emotions. While scholars have long been interested in the image of Africa, one issue that remains unanswered is how news media employs visual tools to support, contradict, or even fabricate narratives. Therefore, this chapter investigates how the leading Hungarian news websites represent Africa through visual images. For this, a new interpretation of cultural conceptualization that lies at the crossroads of cultural linguistics, media science, and visual communication is proposed. The findings highlight that, although traditional views of the continent persist, such as that of a culturally and environmentally diverse region, a place of exotic wonders and wilderness deserving of exploration, and Afro-pessimistic depictions of various crises remain, Africa is also represented as a cradle of talented athletes, while Afro-optimistic frames such as the category of development, are also gaining ground. Moreover, the research highlights the capability of political agenda and current public discourse to manipulate and even distort the image of a continent.