Abstract
Comparative media systems theory has failed to pronounce on trajectories of media development in postcolonial societies in a meaningful way, as media development in postcolonial societies has been analysed from within normative liberal frameworks emanating from North America and Western Europe and later transitional societies in Eastern Europe and East Asia, societies with histories quite separate from the Colonial heritage and legacies that have, and keep, influencing the media–politics nexus in many postcolonial societies. To expand the analysis of media development in postcolonial societies, postcolonial studies have much to add to comparative media systems analysis, not only to expand the analysis beyond the global North but also for the analysis of global disruptions that are challenging normative models of media systems analysis.
Keywords
Introduction
Much critique has been levelled against the application of normative liberal frameworks of media development emanating from North American and Western European societal contexts to media development in other parts of the world and postcolonial societies in the global South in particular. In later years, however, comparative analysis has in some instances been expanded to look at media developments in the postcolony from within comparative frameworks emanating from transitional societies and young democracies in Eastern Europe and East Asia. While many postcolonial societies in the global South share similarities with transitional societies in Eastern Europe and East Asia, where traces of a former authoritarian system remain with regard to how the news media has developed, there are also many divergences and contextual factors warranting a different analysis that accounts for histories shaped by colonialism and its legacies that keep, influencing the media–politics nexus.
Taking South Africa as a case study, the article uses postcolonial studies as a framework for expanding comparative frameworks for media systems analysis. The argument is that to better analyse trajectories of media development and news journalism in particular, comparative analysis need to move beyond studies drawing on media development in transitional societies and instead look to the unique challenges facing the news media in societies where transformation efforts are centred on challenging the legacies of colonialism and later apartheid and its aberrations. In this regard, postcolonial studies have much to add to comparative media systems analysis. This to expand the analysis beyond the global North, and to factor in global disruptions that are challenging normative models of media analysis as whole. No more evident is this than through the renewed and amplified calls for decolonisation emanating from centres in the postcolony, but reverberating throughout the world.
Comparative analysis in question
Increased attention is being paid to analysing the news media and media systems from a comparative perspective, and in later years normative theorisation has made somewhat of a comeback. Notable is the by now widely invoked ‘Comparative Media systems framework’ developed by Hallin and Mancini (2004) in which the authors set out three models of media systems and their relationship to the political system. This has been followed by a wealth of studies of varying scale and scope, and even taken further by the authors themselves in subsequent work where the initial model has been tested against societies outside of North America and Eastern Europe (Hallin and Mancini, 2012, 2017), including a case study of South Africa (Hadland, 2012).
The latter is important as much critique has been levelled at comparative studies and their overt focus on Western nations and contexts at the behest of non-Western contexts, also acknowledged by Hallin and Mancini (2012, 2017) themselves, including the problems of quantitative analysis and operationalization when investigating complex, dynamic systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2017). Critique has also been directed at the Western dominated normative theorisation applied to non-Western contexts. In addition, Mellado et al. (2017) when examining journalistic role performance across cultural scapes show they resemble neither existing ideal media system typologies nor political or regional clusters, but instead reveal patterns of ‘multilayered hybrid’ journalistic cultures.
In order to counter the Western insularity that dominate the discipline, we need to recognise that experiences of media development in the postcolony and the global South are not only equal to, but also necessary for, the advancement of communications scholarship as a whole (cf. Chasi and Rodny-Gumede, 2016: 696). Equally, normative classifications of media systems, along a sliding scale from free of political interference and highly developed professionally to politically co-opted and unprofessional, does not provide enough nuanced data to capture the nuances and unique characteristics of media systems shaped by histories of colonialism, and later aberrations and political systems based on racial suppression and exclusion (Rodny-Gumede, 2015a: 132). Neither does classifications of ‘African media’ systems modelled on legacies of former colonial masters and/or post-independence liberation government agendas. As, Hallin and Mancini (2012: 287) concede, ‘comparative analysis is valuable only to the extent that context matters’ and without it few meaningful explanatory conclusions can be drawn (Salgado, 2018: 196).
Thus, to fully understand what has shaped the development of the news media in the postcolony, we need not only be vary of contextual factors and the unique characteristics of each case study within our comparative frameworks but also, as McMillin (2007) asserts, move away from analytic frameworks steeped in ‘Eurocentric conceptualisations of the modern nation and the corresponding positivist paradigm of development studies’, that have given birth to the ‘dichotomies: North-South, East-West, First World-Third World, Occident-Orient’ (p. 6). Such dichotomies clearly do not hold sway in the context of many postcolonial societies, that instead often encompasses them all. South Africa exemplifies this and has been labelled a microcosm of the world in all its diversity but also inequality (Sparks, 2003). As a result, South Africa is commonly analysed purely on its own terms, without the use of any comparative framework to make broader generalisations about the social relations observed (Hadland, 2007: 14). This with the risk of African media studies being classified as area studies confined by isolated case studies (Wasserman, 2018: 112).
With this in mind, comparative models such as the Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2012) framework and the typologies it encompasses as well as later adaptations of the same gives us, not so much a model, as a set of variables to consider in the analysis of media systems (Rodny-Gumede, 2015a: 132). As Humphreys (2012: 168) argues rather than creating typologies for comparison, we should develop a comprehensive range of variables that can be used to explore the relationship between media and politics. This as the risk is otherwise that we end up over-emphasizing the model over individual case studies and the contextual factors that shape media development (Rodny-Gumede, 2015a: 132). Comparative research studies often struggle with problems of universality of concepts, and as researchers we need to guard ourselves against comparing the incomparable and neglecting context at the behest of forced universality as well as underlying assumptions of the autonomy of units analysed, ignoring complex interplays and mutual influences among the units (Azarian, 2011:120–121). Overcoming such limitations is particularly important given the fact that conceptualisations used for comparative analysis is often developed from within a Western context (Salgado, 2018: 197–199), and societal contexts decidedly different from those of many postcolonial societies.
Instead of quests for universality, postcolonial studies can help expand on existing as well as new definitions of variables that might be interpreted differently in differing contexts, and that importantly differ significantly from the variables and analytic frames drawn from many transitional societies, particularly in Eastern Europe. Here, postcolonial studies also show us the challenge of comparative studies and the caution that needs to be taken to understand varying colonial histories that differ markedly from region to region, and between countries within the same region, where different colonial powers have made their own imprints (McMillin, 2007: 7).
Comparative media systems analysis and postcolonial studies
Postcolonial studies have been largely ignored in studies of the media (Kumar, 2014), with postcolonial studies and media studies developing as parallel but separate fields with very few points of intersection (Fernandez, 1999: 59). This said, much of our understanding of the varying and sometimes conflicting roles of the news media in the postcolony emanates from the adoption of postcolonial theory in media studies. The adoption of postcolonial theory in media studies is, as Shome (2016) argues, important if we are to renew and enrich the discipline. Equally the inclusion of media studies in postcolonial studies highlights the role played by media in the context of transnational, colonial, and nationalist relations, and the ways in which they intersect and inform many contemporary postcolonial sensibilities (Shome, 2016: 245).
This said, even if increasingly adopted within the field of media studies, postcolonial theory has yet to influence comparative media systems theory and the analysis of trajectories of media development. Instead, much scholarly research is lodged in frameworks drawing on transitional societies in Eastern Europe and to a lesser extent East Asia, societies with histories quite different from those of postcolonial societies. If we look towards southern Africa, the renewed emphasis on decolonisation shows that transformation debates are no longer about rectifying more recent inequities in the news media or society more broadly but relate to the perdurability of colonial legacies and their mutations.
Postcolonial studies engage with the legacy left by colonialism and its consequences for colonised nations and its people, and provides a means of defiance by which any exploitative and discriminative practices, can be challenged independent of time and space (Rukundwa and van Aarde, 2007: 1171). Thus, postcolonial studies deal with former colonies as well as colonial powers. And while, some former colonies have enjoyed independence longer than others, and even if a country such as South Africa ceased being a colony in 1910 when it gained independence from Britain, colonialism did in fact not end there and was instead reinforced through the apartheid state, only formally abolished in 1994 when South Africa became a democracy. As Frassinelli (2018: 4) and others have argued, ‘apartheid was colonialism of a special type’ and sums up all that was wrong with colonialism through the classification and segregation of human beings based on race, cultural domination, the merciless exploitation of black workers an natural resources for the benefit of a white minority, and the denial to the majority of owning land or accessing quality education.
This also has implications for the news media and as Wasserman (2018: 50) says: As far as African media studies is concerned, the shared experience of a colonial subjection, struggles for independence and continued geopolitical and economic marginalization in the era of globalization suggest that a study of media on the continent should include a focus on the lived experiences of Africans in relation to such media, embedded as these are within unequal local and global power relations.
By foregrounding marginalised voices, postcolonial studies can show us how to avoid falling prey to Eurocentric ideas of the normative performance of the media and instead show us ways to look at hybridity and ambiguity (cf. Bhabha, 1994), and to find approaches that ‘takes into account the multiple, overlapping spaces and flows in the era of globalisation yet refuses to gloss over global power imbalances and material inequalities’ (Nyamnjoh, 2011: 20). And, this without falling prey to an idealisation of Africa or a romantic essentialism of ‘African values’ (McMillin, 2007: 54). The argument for the inclusion of a postcolonial critique of media studies is as Wasserman (2018: 53) argues, not the same as a rejection of Northern or Western theory, it is a way of reflecting on binaries as well as mutuality in power relations between the supposed Northern and Southern hemispheres, ‘themselves diverse and heterogenous’.
Further to this, not only do postcolonial studies add to comparative media systems theory in ways that highlights the difference between postcolonial and transitional societies, it also opens up for a better understanding of inherent differences between regions and nations within the postcolony. No colonial experience is the same, and the colonial project itself shaped by pre-colonial traditions, equally post-colonialism does not mark a complete or clean rupture from colonialism (McMillin, 2007: 71). Instead, the colonial experience as well as the postcolonial, is partially formed and premised on the resistance it met and how such resistance was fashioned (McMillin, 2007: 71), however coherent or fragmented (Young quoted in McMillin, 2007: 71).
Equally, contemporary debates in the postcolony are fashioned within national contexts, ranging from constitutional democracies with entrenched rights to equality, freedom of expression, and freedom of the media, to one-party dictatorships with no or very little access to any protection of free speech. And while a country such as South Africa has one of the most liberal Constitutions in the world, with press freedom and freedom of speech enshrined in the Bill of Rights, other postcolonial countries on the continent do not enjoy the same freedoms. And independent of Constitutional provisions, balance and fairness might be hard to obtain in contexts where socio-economic disparities dictate readership and access to sources, where gender equality is far from achieved or even commonly accepted as desired, and where powerful governments and more or less one-party states, calls for either conformity or outright opposition. Thus, the role of the media and the functions it ought to fulfil are contested and the policies and contestations underlining such developments lodged within historical as well as contemporary global as well as local contexts continuously shaping postcolonial states.
Given the above, the question is how postcolonial studies can add to comparative media systems analysis in order to better capture media development in postcolonial societies. And how can some of the enduring legacies of colonialism and contestations around the state, nationhood, culture, identity, race and gender be accommodated within frameworks for comparative media systems analysis? The latter as emphasised earlier is not only important for better understanding media development in the postcolony and the global South, but also for the understanding of trajectories of media development in the global North amidst global disruptions.
Expanding frameworks for comparative media systems analysis
State–media relations and the structure of media markets
State–media relations and how they influence both the external and internal media policy environment are often emphasised in comparative frameworks for media analysis, and so also in the Hallin and Mancini (2004, 2012) framework. In this regard, analogies between transitional societies in eastern Europe and postcolonial societies display converging as well diverging traits.
The postcolonial state is in much mirrored as well as enmeshed in the colonial state and its institutions (Young, 2012). This has however not changed the fact that many former liberation movements, once in power, have managed to turn their new founded democracies in to one party states, where the distinction between government and state has become all but eroded (Gumede, 2007). This has paved the way for the rise of a new elite, that has come to power through close political links. The latter might at first glance seem to overlap with developments in transitional societies in Eastern Europe and East Asia, however with some important differences.
With regards to many transitional societies in Eastern Europe what has been highlighted are trends of elite continuity, i.e., how the old communist regimes as well as politicians have stayed in power by embracing a new neo-liberal agenda (Sparks, 2009), however in South Africa the case is one of elite renewal rather than elite continuity. This through the rise of a new black elite, empowered through Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deals with close political connections (Marais, 2011: 139–140, Turok, 2008: 168–175). This not unlike the political elite during the previous dispensation, which saw the National Party (NP) forge close ties with Afrikaner capital.
However, whether former communist regimes or liberation movements turned governing parties, shared are the adoption of policies that have encouraged rapid marketisation and liberalisation of the economy (Sparks, 2005, 2009, 2011). And, while the print media sector has often been left largely to the market forces, former state broadcasters have often seen continued interventions from powerful political parties that have found it hard to relinquish control over this sector of the media and who instead have adopted policies of ‘market authoritarianism’ i.e., amalgamations of state and commercial interest (Sparks, 2011; Vartanova, 2012; Voltmer, 2012; Zhao, 2012).
Thus, what is needed for the analysis of the news media in postcolonial societies is an understanding of a state formation premised on the foundations of the institutions of the former colonial powers as well as radically reoriented by post liberation/post-authoritarian ruling parties that have adopted a decidedly neoliberal policy agenda (Rodny-Gumede, 2015a). This also has implications for how media markets have developed.
Foremost what shapes media markets in the postcolony are issues around access, a variable often neglected in comparative studies. This is also acknowledged in the reassessment of the initial 2004 Hallin and Mancini model, where reference is made to the importance of ‘inequality of media access (between classes, genders, urban and rural areas, and linguistic groups)’ (Hallin and Mancini, 2012: 288). These latter variables are decisively important for understanding media systems in postcolonial societies where particularly the press has been model on that of the former colonial powers, and audiences divided in terms of race and ethnicity. Issues of access in many post-colonial societies are not only premised on language and literacy rates but also on economic inequality. In some instances, this is mediated by new media platforms, including social media, that not only provide easier access for a broader layer of the population but also impact the media-politics nexus in many emerging democracies and postcolonial societies, particularly through social activism. The role played by electronic media as a means of mass diffusion in countries outside of North America and Western Europe is also acknowledge by Hallin and Mancini (2012: 288), and merit further exploration.
In their initial model, Hallin and Mancini (2004: 24) also argue that, as far as they know, no country that did not develop a mass circulation press in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century has ever subsequently developed one and as such the newspaper market and its relationship to its audience and role in the wider process of social and political communication has remained mainly an exercise in communication between elites. In the context of South Africa, this is not the case. Post-apartheid South Africa can claim to have a mass press directly geared towards black readers through the growth in the tabloid market, a market that is also expanding rapidly through the inroads made by South African news outlets on the African continent (Wasserman, 2010). The importance of the growth of the tabloid market for audience stratification is also emphasised by McCargo (2012) in relation to the development of Asian media markets. Scholars have argued that the new tabloids, controversial as their contents may be, have played a significant role in opening up the news media market to previously neglected audience (Wasserman, 2010). The impact of the tabloid market still under explored and not necessarily addressed in the simple characterization of an elite versus mass market media, where the tabloid media is fulfilling the role of catering for audiences previously excluded.
Further to this, media markets in the postcolony are characterized by a hybridization of local and global influences, despite enduring colonial hierarchies of power and how media systems modelled on the old colonial powers have fused with new capital (McMillin, 2007:2). This is most pertinently shown through the presence of Chinese media on the Continent and how this is changing ownership patterns and media practices and the questions this raises about the role of the media, media freedom and ethics (Wasserman, 2018: 53). And as, Voltmer (2012) argues, more often than not the media in transitional societies and emerging democracies become hybrid systems with tension between structure and agency, and where relations between media and politics are interlocking and overlapping processes (Roudakova, 2012). Hence the analysis of media markets, their relationship to political powers, and audience stratification in South Africa as well as in many post-colonial societies needs to be seen in the light of new growing markets, media platforms and market segments, rather than already cemented ones. Issues of access are of outmost importance and goes beyond language and literacy rates. In this regard, the influence of economic inequality on the media market has largely been ignored in comparative models.
Structure versus agency and questions around professionalism
Highlighted is also how comparative media systems analysis tend to emphasise structure over agency (McCargo, 2012; Roudakova, 2012), and the lack of comparative studies focusing on journalistic role performance (Mellado et al., 2017). 1 Instead, scholars studying the media in many transitional societies have noted a re-politicization of the media which suggests that while media liberalisation and media freedom have been encouraged in the transition from a previously authoritarian political framework, the new leadership has found it hard to support an all too liberalised media and as a result has employed various strategies to curb media freedom (McQuail, 2000; Rozumilowicz, 2002; Sparks, 2000, 2009), often under the auspice of ensuring diversity and the protection of minority rights and interests. In some instances, such attempts at curbing media freedom have also been done arguing for an indigenisation of the media and under the auspice of conserving cultural and similar trends have been observed in China and other East Asian countries where ‘Asian values’ and cultural traditions have been touted by governments’ as barely disguised attempts at curtailing media freedom and enforcing censorship (Massey and Chang quoted in Voltmer, 2014:159).
In South Africa the ANC-led Government has proposed a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) (Berger, 2010; Hadland, 2007; Harber, 2008; Wasserman, 2010; Wasserman and de Beer, 2006), including a new Protection of State Information Bill. The Bill known as the ‘Secrecy Bill’, has the potential of making even the most inauspicious piece of government and state information classified and while passed in to legislation by Parliament already in 2013, former President Jacob Zuma as well as current President Cyril Ramaphosa has yet to sign it into law (deVos, 2018).
However, what is lacking in this narrative is the idea that, far from being co-opted by political powers, the South African news media have so far resisted attempts at coercion from government, with the print media keeping pressure on government through reporting corruption and have also actively resisted attempts to curb media freedom. And, while the media in the postcolony has often served as an extension of colonial administrative power and as ‘sites for the reproduction of patriarchal and colonial structures’ (McMillin, 2007: 71), individual journalists and media outlets have also often exercised considerable agency. The latter is important and shows us how media houses and individual journalists, often at a great price to their own safety as well as their careers, have shaped the role that the news media has played during, as well as after, political reforms have been instigated. Thus, the role of the news media has often been ambiguous and implicated in both ‘the institutionalisation of the colonial project, as well as in its repudiation’ (Ogola and Rodny-Gumede, 2014: 227).
While there are similarities between transitional and postcolonial societies, this is also where they differ. As Sparks (2011) argues, mass mobilisation influence politics and therefore there has in fact been less involvement from the government in South Africa for example than in China, Russia and many countries in Eastern Europe. In South Africa civil society has played a vital part in counter balancing attempts at political co-option through activism facilitated by social media networks (Sparks, 2011). The picture that emerges is one of constant negotiation between structural constraints, imposed or not, real or perceived, vis a vis agency and autonomy exercised by media houses, as well as individual journalists, which us that there is constant tension between processes that migrate towards a global liberal ethos vis a vis legacies of autocracy (Hadland, 2007).
This also comes through in the ways that South African journalists conceptualise their own role. In post-apartheid South Africa, as well as in many other postcolonial societies, particularly in southern Africa, the debate about the role of journalism has often been framed as a debate around whether or not journalists should serve what is perceived as the national interest as opposed to the public interest, and as such collaborate towards development ideals and nation building (Hadland, 2007; Netshitenzhe, 2002a, 2002b; Wasserman and de Beer, 2006), and come through in whether journalists see themselves as neutral conveyors of information or as influencers of public opinion.
Ogola and Rodny-Gumede (2014:227) argue that the debate about professionalism and quality news in the post-colony raises fundamental conceptual and practical challenges. The idea of quality often assumes a universal understanding. A position that ignores contextual factors for how quality is measured, factors that need to be considered as these have implications for what constitutes quality journalism (Ogola and Rodny-Gumede, 2014). The transition from authoritarian rule to democracy also requires radical new role orientations and rules of interaction between the media and those in power (Voltmer, 2006:7). And, while the watchdog function of the media is very important in societies that have come out of authoritarian rule, where political elites were not held accountable, the new democratic society is faced with the dilemma of keeping new political elites accountable, as well as not destabilizing the often fragile legitimacy of the new regime (Voltmer, 2006:7).
This is confirmed by interviews conducted with South African journalists from a cross section of South African news media that while emphasizing their independence and right to impart information deemed in the public interest, also acknowledge that there are other factors that need to be considered in the context of the nascent democracy (Rodny-Gumede, 2015b). Instead they emphasize that the role of journalism need not be polarized as one of either being a watchdog of power or serving a particular government agenda and/or particular interest groups, and as far as social commentary goes, it might be in the public interest, and in the interest of nation building, to accommodate even the national interest (Rodny-Gumede, 2015b). Given that large segments of the audience has not been served by the mainstream news media and that access is still fraught with problems, the question is rather who the public is in the public interest, and maybe as Wasserman and de Beer (2006: 70) argue, the critical issue in post-apartheid media debates is not so much about the public versus national interest, but rather about how the media conceives ‘public’ and ‘nation’.
In this regard, South African journalists acknowledge the critique that the news media is elitist and removed from the concerns of the broader population in the country (Rodny-Gumede, 2012, 2015b). Research shows that South African journalists, while broadly subscribing to a liberal model of the media and ideals of journalism as entrenched in ideas of objectivity, however contested, fairness, balance and accuracy are not central to journalism, are also are acutely aware of the legal, political, cultural and socio-economic contexts in which journalism is practiced. In this regard, the widely quoted ideas and ideals of the ‘Western’ normative liberal model of the news media is not necessarily enforced, neither desired (Fourie, 2011; Rodny-Gumede, 2015b, 2015c). This ties in with ideas around identity and identity formation, where postcolonial theory has emphasised cultural hybridization and an anti-essentialist notion of identity (Bhabha, 1994; Said, 1979; Spivak, 1988). And, in this regard, South African journalists cite a professional identity that cannot be divorced from one’s own political loyalties, religion, culture, race or ethnicity (Rodny-Gumede, 2015b). Equally, this applies to the audience and comparative media systems analysis as applied to contexts other than the postcolony often assumes a homogenous audience which simply does not exist in the postcolony, instead the audience need to be considered from a diverse set of perspectives, where culture, political and religious contexts and expressions play important roles (Rodny-Gumede, 2015b, 2015c).
Important are also considerations around transformation and equity in the structure of the news media and the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in media organisations as well as news coverage (Malik, 2002). Postcolonial governments all face the challenge of developing a common sense of identity and sense of belonging. In South Africa there have for centuries existed a disjuncture between the state, on the one hand and the diversity of ethnic, religious and language groups on the other. Racial transformation, while prominent on political agendas, is however a highly contested notion with implications for how nation building is conceptualised. While Government has consistently criticised the news media for being untransformed and racist, and for looking at the world through ‘white’ lenses, the news media itself argue that narrow policies of affirmative action based on race are fundamentally flawed and will have little or no impact on the standards or ethos of the news media and in the extension the role that the news media can play in a broader transformation process. Topics widely debated in the South African news media (Teer-Tomaselli and Tomaselli, 2001:143) but often neglected in scholarship and comparative frameworks for media analysis (Mihelj, 2011). Debates about news media and the role that the news media is assumed to perform in the new democracy is thus premised on tension between ideals of non-racialism on the one hand, and African nationalist ideas and racialised politics that can serve divisionary agendas on the other (Filatova, 1997; Marx 1998).
And while, headways has been made in achieving racial as well as gender equity in the context of the South African news media, this is far from the case in many other African countries (Lowe-Morna, 2018). In particular, postcolonial feminist theory has emphasised the male dominance of the field and the necessity to consider wider gender dimensions, and the particular bounds of black women (Orgeret, 2018: 352). In this regard, and despite some headways made in terms of employment equity numbers, the gender imbalances that still exists in all spheres of society, including the news media are considerable, particularly with regards to black African females (Daniels, 2014; Rodny-Gumede, 2012, 2015d).
Concluding remarks
Comparative media studies have neglected to look towards media developments beyond the global North, and that such studies have been decidedly steeped in Western theorisation and frameworks that have failed to adequately capture and explain media developments in contexts outside of a North America, Western Europe and in later years, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Not only does this come through in the analysis of non-Western contexts, and postcolonial societies in particular, but also in the ways in which normative assumptions often fails to capture a changing global world order impacting both Western and non-Western contexts. And, while the focus in comparative studies might have shifted in later years to become more inclusive of contexts beyond the global North, the theoretical and analytical lens through which such studies are conducted remain premised on contexts which ignores the impact and residues of colonialism, not only on the postcolony but globally.
While South Africa shares many commonalities with countries that have undergone radical political change, the unique character of South African politics and the transition itself has implications for the way in which the news media has developed. Political culture is a hugely important factor in the media-politics nexus, and the extent to which a remaining culture that dictates that the media should be partisan to the developmental goals and policies of the new political establishment is contested and resisted. In South Africa it is conceivable that politics informed by the liberation struggle against colonialism and apartheid have particular consequences for how media policy is structured. However, there is also evidence in South Africa of a high degree of resistance against conformity, particularly from a strong civil society sector. Furthermore, unique to South Africa and other post-colonial societies are the factors of race and racial divisions in society, and especially the post-apartheid project of racial transformation, i.e., making society more equitable in terms of race. Even though ethnicity and ethnic tension can be seen in transitions in Eastern Europe, for example, the issue of race remains unique to the post-colonial societies in sub-Saharan Africa. Foremost what is shaping debates around the news media and the contestations embedded in them are questions of the ‘postcolonial’ and how colonial legacies of racialism, sexism and class are enmeshed in both historical as well as contemporary global power shifts.
Postcolonial studies here provide a framework for the analysis of variables less common and less thought of in Western contexts. Postcolonial studies emphasise the importance of looking at media development and media systems through theoretical prisms of hybridism and acknowledging converging as well as diverging trajectories of media development and how such trajectories are at once influenced by factors common as well as unique, to the case studies chosen. It provides for the analysis of hybridity within and across nations as well as systems, platforms, practices and the values they encompass. And with societal shifts happening all over the world, looking at media developments in contexts where heterogeneity and hybridism shapes the media, stand to advance and enrich media studies as a whole.
In doing so we can develop and expand on comparative, as well as, normative models for media analysis in ways that talk to fast changing media scapes globally. Models that talk to a media system that encompasses goals, processes and content that speak to postcolonial experiences and needs, and that facilitates transformation from colonial and postcolonial societal orders, into societies in which individuals can be the most they can be. In this regard, media scholars of the global North as well as the global South have much to learn from each other. Importantly, this is where the global South stand to lead the way for new theorisation and models that talk to a world shaped by inequalities, but also by increased calls for equality, dignity and humanising development.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.