Media Power and Hegemony in South Africa

Media Power and Hegemony in South Africa

Author: Blessed Ngwenya

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-15

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1000280829

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This book critically explores how meanings of ‘independence’ are constructed and reconfigured by public service broadcasters in the global south, with a particular focus on the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Blessed Ngwenya questions the institutional, political economy and world systems paradigms born out of coloniality which continue to influence broadcasting and media in the global south, and instead presents a radical local understanding of freedom in the present day. The author draws on detailed empirical interviews with members of staff from across the SABC, including board members, senior management, and journalists, offering an intimate insight into how the participants themselves perceive, understand, and deal with the issues and problems they face in relation to independence. Framed by a rich analysis of the historical context, this book provides readers with the theoretical and empirical toolkit needed to place the everyday experiences and needs of their subjects first, and to ultimately arrive at an accurate understanding of independence in its several senses. Contributing to growing global debates on the decolonisation of knowledge, this book is critical reading for advanced scholars and researchers of African media, culture, communication and epistemic freedom.


Constructing Hegemony: The South African Commercial Media and the (Mis)Representation of Nationalisation

Constructing Hegemony: The South African Commercial Media and the (Mis)Representation of Nationalisation

Author: Mandla J. Radebe

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9781869144586

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Post-apartheid South Africa continues to face challenges in its attempts at economic transformation for the benefit of the majority of the people, who were marginalized under decades of apartheid and colonization. This need for transformation has resulted in various policy initiatives, including the ongoing demands for the nationalization of the economy. The commercial media has a central role in shaping policy debates. But this media is an ideological tool as much as it is an economic resource since it is owned and controlled by people with political and economic interests. It, therefore, tends to support and promote the interests of the owners. This book provides a Marxist critique of the representation of the nationalization of the mines debate by the South African commercial media. Radebe examines corporate control of the media in order to articulate the interrelations between the state, capital, and the media, and the way the commercial media represents, shapes and influences public policy. He concludes that beyond factors such as ownership, commercialization, and the influence of advertising on news content, the global capitalist hegemony has a more powerful influence on the commercial media in South Africa than previously thought.


Media Matters in South Africa

Media Matters in South Africa

Author: Jeanne Prinsloo

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13:

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This report contains a selection of contributed papers and presentations from a conference attended by 270 educators and media workers committed to formulate a vision for media education in South Africa. Pointing out that media education has been variously described in South Africa as visual literacy, mass media studies, teleliteracy, and film studies, or as dealing with educational technology or educational media, the introduction cites a definition of media education as an exploration of contemporary culture alongside more traditional literary texts. It is noted that this definition raises issues for education as a whole, for traditional language study, for media, for communication, and for understanding the world. The 37 selected papers in this collection are presented in seven categories: (1) Why Media Education? (keynote paper by Bob Ferguson); (2) Matters Educational (10 papers on media education and visual literacy); (3) Working Out How Media Works (4 papers on film studies, film technology, and theory); (4) Creating New Possibilities for Media Awareness (9 papers on film and television and 4 on print media); (5) Training and Empowering (2 papers focusing on teachers and 4 focusing on training producers); (6) Media Developing Media Awareness (2 papers); and (7) Afterthoughts (1 paper). Appendices include the Unesco Declaration on Media Eduction (1982), Recommendations from the Toulouse Colloquy on New Directions in Media Education (1990), and Resolutions and Conclusions of the First National Media Education Conference (Durban, 1990). Most of the papers provide their own bibliographies. (DB)


The Cinema of Apartheid

The Cinema of Apartheid

Author: Keyan Tomaselli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-13

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1317928393

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This study analyses the historical development of South African cinema up to he book's original publication in 1988. It describes the films and comments on their relationship to South African realities, addressing all aspects of the industry, focusing on domestic production, but also discussing international film companies who use South Africa as a location. It explores tensions between English-language and Afrikaans-language films, and between films made for blacks and films made for whites. Going behind the scenes the author looks at the financial infrastructure, the marketing strategies, and the works habits of the film industry. He concludes with a discussion of independent filmmaking, the obstacles facing South Africans who want to make films with artistic and political integrity, and the possibilities of progress in the future. Includes comprehensive bibliography and filmography listing all feature films made in South Africa between 1910 and 1985 together with documentary films by South Africans, non-South Africans, and exiles about the country.


Cinemas of the Black Diaspora

Cinemas of the Black Diaspora

Author: Michael T. Martin

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 9780814325889

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This is a study of the cinematic traditions and film practices in the black Diaspora. With contributions by film scholars, film critics, and film-makers from Europe, North America and the Third World, this diverse collection provides a critical reading of film-making in the black Diaspora that challenges the assumptions of colonialist and ethnocentrist discourses about Third World, Hollywood and European cinemas. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora examines the impact on film-making of Western culture, capitalist production and distribution methods, and colonialism and the continuing neo-colonial status of the people and countries in which film-making is practiced. Organized in three parts, the study first explores cinema in the black Diaspora along cultural and political lines, analyzing the works of a radical and aesthetically alternative cinema. The book proceeds to group black cinemas by geographical sites, including Africa, the Caribbean and South America, Europe, and North America, to provide global context for comparative and case study analyses. Finally, three important manifestoes document the political and economic concerns and counter-hegemonic institutional organizing efforts of black and Third World film-makers from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora should serve as a valuable basic reference and research tool for the study of world cinema. While celebrating the diversity, innovativeness, and fecundity of film-making in different regions of the world, this important collection also explicates the historical importance of film-making as a cultural form and political practice.


Media, Identity and the Public Sphere in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Media, Identity and the Public Sphere in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Author: Abebe Zegeye

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9004474048

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The essays in this collection reveal that the social and political development of post-apartheid South Africa depends to an important degree on the evolving cultural, social and political identities of its diverse population and on the role of the media of mass communications in the country's new multicultural democracy. The popular struggle against the country's former apartheid regime and the on-going democratisation of South African politics have generated enormous creativity and inspiration as well as many contradictions and unfulfilled expectations. In the present period of social transformation, the legacy of the country's past is both a source of continuing conflict and tension as well as a cause for celebration and hope. Post-apartheid South Africa provides an important case study of social transformation and how the cultural, social and political identities of a diverse population and the structure and practices of the media of mass communications affect the prospects for developing a multicultural democracy. The promise and the challenge of building a multicultural democratic society in a country with a racist and violent authoritarian legacy involves people with different identities and interests learning how to respect their differences and to live together in peace. It involves developing an inclusive or overarching common identity and a commitment to working together for a common destiny based on social equity and justice. South Africa's media of mass communications have an important role to play in the process of unprecedented social transformation - both in developing the respect for differences and the overarching identity as well as providing the public forum and the channels of communication needed for the successful development of the country's multicultural democracy. In South Africa, the democratization of the media must go hand in hand with the democratization of the political system in order to ensure that the majority of the citizenry participate effectively in the country's multicultural democracy. Topics covered include The "Struggle for African Identity: Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance", "Between the Local and the Global: South African Languages and the Internet", "Shooting the East/Veils and Masks: Uncovering Orientalism in South African Media" and "Black and White in Ink: Discourses of Resistance in South African Cartooning". Contributors are Pal Ahluwalia, Gabeba Baderoon, Richard L. Harris, Sean Jacobs, Elizabeth Le Roux, Andy Mason, Thembisa Mjwacu, Herman Wasserman, and Abebe Zegeye.