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In Media in Postapartheid South Africa, author Sean Jacobs turns to media politics and the consumption of media as a way to understand recent political developments in South Africa and their relations with the African continent and the world. Jacobs looks at how mass media define the physical and human geography of the society and what it means for comprehending changing notions of citizenship in postapartheid South Africa. Jacobs claims that the media have unprecedented control over the distribution of public goods, rights claims, and South Africa's integration into the global political economy in ways that were impossible under the state-controlled media that dominated the apartheid years. Jacobs takes a probing look at television commercials and the representation of South Africans, reality television shows and South African continental expansion, soap operas and postapartheid identity politics, and the internet as a space for reassertions and reconfigurations of identity. As South Africa becomes more integrated into the global economy, Jacobs argues that local media have more weight in shaping how consumers view these products in unexpected and consequential ways.
A central thesis of this study is that freedom of the press- the right to talk serious politics and to report and criticize government with impunity- now nonexistent for the black majority, has been steadily declining for the white population as well. Some South African journalists believe that the indistinct line between meaningful press freedom and unacceptable government control has already been crossed.
This timely book argues that the Global North’s research methods and traditional assumptions are not valid to the media landscapes and audiences of the Global South. With South Africa as the focus, the authors offer a new understanding of media diversity along an audience-centred approach. Disappointingly, research shows that most South African citizens (most of whom are economically marginalised) are found to experience extremely low levels of media content diversity in their personal media diets. The contributing factors are inter-related and complex, but include the inequitable distribution of media content, a lack of African language media, and most especially, the cost of media access which is unaffordable to many. In this book, the authors examine what went wrong with post-apartheid attempts to democratise the media landscape, and why the experienced levels of media diversity by the majority South African audience remain so woefully low. While media diversity is usually measured by policymakers, sector stakeholders or by market-related imperatives, this book foregrounds the perspective of the media consumer. In doing so, traditional media measuring is inverted – leading to a more in-depth understanding of how ordinary people in the Global South receive media content, how much, and why. The authors offer a holistic analysis of the ineffectuality of key media policymaking processes, projects and institutions – while also suggesting how these could be transformed to create a more diverse and broadly accessible media landscape.
South Africa's Resistance Press is a collection of essays celebrating the contributions of scores of newspapers, newsletters, and magazines that confronted the state in the generation after 1960. These publications contributed in no small measure to reviving a mass movement inside South Africa that would finally bring an end to apartheid. This marginalized press had an impact on its audience that cannot be measured in terms of the small number of issues sold, the limited amount of advertising revenue raised, or the relative absence of effective marketing and distribution strategies. These journalists rendered communities visible that were too often invisible and provided a voice for those too often voiceless. They contributed immeasurably to broadening the concept of a free press in South Africa. The guardians of the new South Africa owe these publications a debt of gratitude that cannot be repaid.
Less than a decade after the advent of democracy in South Africa, tabloid newspapers have taken the country by storm. One of these papers -- the Daily Sun -- is now the largest in the country, but it has generated controversy for its perceived lack of respect for privacy, brazen sexual content, and unrestrained truth-stretching. Herman Wasserman examines the success of tabloid journalism in South Africa at a time when global print media are in decline. He considers the social significance of the tabloids and how they play a role in integrating readers and their daily struggles with the political and social sphere of the new democracy. Wasserman shows how these papers have found an important niche in popular and civic culture largely ignored by the mainstream media and formal political channels.
What has media freedom entailed over the couple of centuries and successive governments of the geopolitical region that became South Africa since it was colonised by Westerners? And why can media freedom be described as both pillar and cornerstone of a democracy? It’s simple, as in the words of Nelson Mandela, first state president of a democratic South Africa: Press freedom is the “lifeblood of democracy”. This book tells the tale of the various states of press freedom, or unfreedom, from colonial times to today – from a British governor called a dictator and a despot, through apartheid’s “pigmentocracy”, or “sjambokracy”, where the rule of law “has been replaced by the rule of the whip”, up to the dawn of liberation, with media freedom entrenched in Article 16 of South Africa’s Bill of Rights. And why should all of this concern you? Because media freedom is not about the freedom of the media. It is about your freedom. As was formulated by an editor under apartheid: “If we don’t have a public sympathetic to a free press, not only will we not have a free press, we won’t have a democracy either.” Or, in the words of former Sowetan editor and SANEF chair, Mpumelelo Mhkabela: “Media freedom has nothing to do with the media, but with the freedom of citizens.” And that is why you should know that a free media is the only guarantee for your freedom. As we have seen, both under apartheid and also under a democratic dispensation, it is a matter of a luta continua. The struggle continues. But you, the public, are the guardian of those that guard democracy. Help ensure the rights of a free media, and thereby your democratic rights and a democratic South Africa.