Power, Politics and Identity in South African media (2008)

South Africa offers a rich context for the study of the interrelationship between the media and identity. The essays collected here explore the many diverse elements of this interconnection, and give fresh focus to topics that scholarship has tended to overlook, such as the pervasive impact of tabloid newspapers. Interrogating contemporary theory, the authors shed new light on how identities are constructed through the media, and provide case studies that illustrate the complex process of identity renegotiation taking place currently in post-apartheid South Africa. The contributors include established scholars as well as many new voices. Collectively, they represent some of South Africa’s finest media analysts pooling skills to grapple with one of the country’s most vexing issues: who are we?

For teachers, students and anyone else interested in questions of media, race, power and gender, as well as the manner in which new identities are created and old ones mutate, much of interest will be found within the contributions to this important collection.

Editors Adrian Hadland, Eric Louw, Simphiwe Sesanti, Herman Wasserman
Publisher Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2008
ISBN 07969-2202-0, 978-07969-2202-1
Pages 416

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Hadland, Aldridge, Ogada (eds): Re-Visioning Television. Policy, Strategy and Models for the Sustainable Development of Community Television in South Africa (2007)

The introduction of a quality, accessible local television network represents the final piece in post-apartheid South Africa’s media jigsaw. With legislation and policy now in place, the fitting of the last piece is imminent. The race is now on to develop models and fine-tune systems that will make the most powerfully democratic tier of broadcast media sustainable, empowering and development friendly.

Free media and/or community media is anathema to repressive governments around the world. In South Africa, by contrast, community television is expected to play an important role in job creation and skills development as well as contribute to the strengthening of civil society, the promotion of participative governance and the expression of the country’s rich linguistic and cultural heritage.

This book, compiled by South African experts in community broadcasting with the assistance of many key figures in the sector, traces the two-decade campaign for local-level television in South Africa. It highlights the development of policy, reviews existing international models and spells out the technical, financial and managerial challenges that face this nascent sector.

Policy-makers, community television station managers and staff, development analysts and funders, media academics and students, press officers, organisations wishing to access local TV together with anyone interested in community media in the developing world generally, and community television specifically, will find this book important reading.

Editors Adrian Hadland, Mike Aldridge, Joshua Ogada
Publisher Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2007
ISBN 0-7969-2160-1, 978-07969-2160-4
232 pages

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Ellen Propper Mickiewicz: Television, Power, and the Public in Russia (2008)

The Russian media are widely seen to be increasingly controlled by the government. Leaders buy up dissenting television channels and pour money in as fast as it haemorrhages out. As a result, TV news has become narrower in scope and in the range of viewpoints which it reflects: leaders demand assimilation and shut down dissenting stations. Using original and extensive focus group research and new developments in cognitive theory, Ellen Mickiewicz unveils a profound mismatch between the complacent assumption of Russian leaders that the country will absorb their messages, and the viewers on the other side of the screen. This is the first book to reveal what the Russian audience really thinks of its news and the mental strategies they use to process it. The focus on ordinary people, rather than elites, makes a strong contribution to the study of post-communist societies and the individual’s relationship to the media.

• Uses new methods to ascertain the role of television in the lives of the Russian public • Analyses viewers’ reactions to officially controlled television programs, and argues that they are not duped by it • Discusses the loss of diversity following the Kremlin’s decision to close down commercial channels and the resulting effects on the development of democracy in Russia

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2008
ISBN 0521888565, 9780521888561
Length 212 pages

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