Herman Wasserman

Mobile Phones, Popular Media, and Everyday African Democracy: Transmissions and Transgressions

The effectiveness of new media technologies, including mobile phones, to facilitate political participation and create social change has long been contested. Recent events in countries such as Mozambique, Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt have again raised questions about the role new media technologies can play to create alternative public spheres and mobilize for social action. In the African context, where access to new media technologies is marked by big divides, the widespread uptake of mobile phones has led to renewed optimism about the potential they hold for stimulating political participation and widening democratic debate. This article examines various approaches to the relation between mobile phones and participatory democracy, and argues that mobile phones do not only transmit political information needed for rational deliberation in the public sphere, but also transgress cultural and social borders and hierarchies in the way they refashion identities and create informal economies and communicative networks.

Towards an Open Ethics: Implications of New Media Platforms for Global Ethics Discourse

This article provides an international perspective on how new media technologies are shifting the parameters of debates about journalism ethics. It argues that new, mixed media help create an “open media ethics” and offers an exploration of how these developments encourage a transition from a closed professional ethics to an ethics that is the concern of all citizens. The relation between an open media ethics and the idea of a global fifth estate, facilitated by global online media, is explored. The article concludes by providing suggestions for key normative conditions that could guide media ethics in this new media world.

China in South Africa: media responses to a developing relationship

The formal invitation extended to South Africa by China late in 2010 to join the BRIC formation of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) may be seen as a confirmation of the growing economic ties between China and South Africa. The expanded trade between these two countries allows South Africa an opportunity to meet its development needs. For China, the interest in South Africa as an emerging market forms part of its growing interest in Africa for resources, markets, and diplomatic support. However, this involvement has not been unequivocally welcomed. While Chinas growing concern in Africa is seen as an opportunity by some for the continent to grow its economies and become a stronger presence in international markets, others are concerned that the economic boost that China brings to the African continent comes with too many strings attached. These critics are concerned that Chinas controversial human rights record may pose a bad example for African countries, especially when Chinas domestic policies lead to neutrality over human rights abuses in African countries where it seeks to establish links with the ruling elite. Some of these critics go as far as to say that Chinas involvement in Africa constitutes a new type of imperialism and a “scramble for Africa”. This paper investigates how the South African media reports on China and how this reporting compares with the reporting on other BRIC countries to establish whether the negative views by international media of Chinas involvement in Africa, as noted in the academic literature, also holds true of the South African medias general views of Chinas involvement in Africa. The article aims to contextualize this reporting through a reference to the South African media landscape as itself a contested and transitional space.

Journalism in a new democracy: The ethics of listening

Abstract This article takes as its point of departure the recent massacre of striking miners at the Lonmin mine at Marikana in North-West Province, South Africa. The shooting, in which 36 mine workers were killed, was an attack on civilians by state forces unprecedented in the democratic era. The incident received wide local and international coverage. In this article the author argues that the reporting of the event demonstrated how the professional routines of journalism and the orientation towards audiences are related to the position of the mainstream news media within social and political discourses in the country. The author goes on to explore the normative questions raised by the reporting of the event, against the background of the role of the news media in a new democracy. The concept of ‘listening’ is proposed as an ethical alternative to the current dominant normative frameworks for journalism in the country.

Freedom’s just another word? Perspectives on media freedom and responsibility in South Africa and Namibia

As emerging democracies in Africa, the political communication systems of South Africa and Namibia have undergone major shifts since the early 1990s. For both these countries, democracy brought greater and constitutionally protected freedom of the media. This freedom was however seen as linked to certain responsibilities for the media to fulfil as democratic institutions. From ongoing clashes between journalists, politicians and the state in both these countries, it has become clear that there is no clear consensus about what media freedom and responsibility means in the context of these new African democracies. Drawing on approximately 50 semi-structured interviews with journalists, politicians and political intermediaries in South Africa and Namibia, as part of a multi-country comparative study, this article explores how values like freedom of speech, media responsibility and the democratic role of the media are understood by these various role players in the political communication process.

Attack of the killer newspapers! The "tabloid revolution'' in South Africa and the future of newspapers

While newspapers in the global North seem to be involved in a struggle for survival, the inverse seems to be happening in South Africa. Since their introduction almost a decade after South Africa became a democracy, a range of new tabloid papers have taken the country by storm. The Daily Sun is now the biggest selling daily newspaper in the country, showing a constant increase since its launch five years ago. The publisher claims that there is even a second-hand market for copies; such is the demand for the paper among those that can barely afford it. Similar success stories are told about the spate of tabloids following in the Daily Suns wake—Kaapse Son, Cape Sun and Daily Voice. These tabloids speak to a section of the South African public that remain largely out of focus in the mainstream commercial media outlets which, despite far-reaching changes in ownership structures and editorial changes to bring about racial transformation in the media industry after apartheid, are still beholden to those sections of the public conventionally thought to be favoured by advertisers.

Covering HIV / AIDS : towards a heuristic comparison between communitarian and utilitarian ethics

Abstract This article considers two approaches to ethical decision-making on the issue of reporting on human immunodeficiency virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS)-related deaths in the popular media. The conflict between cultural values and the public interest is explored via the ethical approaches of communitarianism and utilitarianism. The death of a former South African presidential spokesperson, is taken as an illustration of how these approaches might lead to different ethical decisions.

Having it both ways: balancing market and political interests at a South African daily newspaper

Abstract The process of democratic transition in South Africa has brought many changes to the national political economic context within which media companies operate. These changes have also brought challenges for South African media companies to reposition themselves ideologically, with their political-economic interests in mind. Coinciding with these local challenges to the South African medias ideological positioning and economic strategising was the re-entry of the South African media into the global arena. Heightened levels of competition and the accelerated influx of foreign content have increased the imperative for local media groups to adjust their strategies. Local media companies have implemented several strategies, including restructuring, globalisation and commercialisation, in response to these challenges. The implications of these macro-shifts can also be noticed on the level of specific individual media outlets. This article examines such a repositioning at the Western Cape-based Afrikaans daily newspaper Die Burger. A mouthpiece of the Nationalist government during the apartheid era, Die Burger had to fundamentally shift its ideological positioning to fall into step with the values of a newly democratic society. This was done by distancing itself from its former political position, and instead embracing a supposedly apolitical market ideology. The shift towards a market-led perspective can be seen most clearly in a management strategy known as ‘synergy’, a practice raising questions regarding orthodox journalistic ideals such as editorial independence, and democratic ideals such as equal access to the mediated public sphere. This article aims to establish the manifestation, nature and influence of synergy at Die Burger and its implications from the perspective of critical political economy.

TOWARDS A GLOBAL JOURNALISM ETHICS VIA LOCAL NARRATIVES

This article argues that a global media ethics can only be arrived at via a study of local contexts. Following the notion of a “critical dialogic ethics” suggested by Christians, it is argued that a global media ethics should be constructed not as an overarching framework or global social contract arrived at through rational deliberation of ethical concepts removed from historical contexts, everyday lived experience and embedded practices, but through critical dialogue and interaction with Others within those contexts. An ethnographic, cultural approach that seeks narrative accounts of local values and practices should go beyond accepting local values and practices as unalterable or essentialist. Such a global dialogic ethics would start with thick descriptions of contextual values and practices. This article offers a first step towards a description of such values and practices within two particular African contexts, South Africa and Namibia. The contextual understanding of normative concepts of “social responsibility” and “freedom” are explored in journalistic narratives. The article points to conflicting interpretations of these notions and highlighting the need for an approach to global media ethics that takes account of the complexity of African contexts.

Tabloid Journalism in South Africa: True Story!

Widespread invectives against the tabloidisation of journalism and the broadcast media, and heated debates about the extent to which tabloid journalism is ‘good’, ‘bad’ or simply ‘ugly’, have been ongoing in public discourse on Western media at least since the late 1980s. Indictments of the formal, stylistic, thematic and ethical aspects of tabloid journalism have also been variously voiced in the African context, not least in regard to South African manifestations of tabloid journalism. Wasserman’s account of the rise, success and (by now routinised) inclusion of tabloids within the repertoireContents Acknowledgments 1. Shock! Horror! Scandal! The Tabloid Controversy and Journalism Studies in Post-Apartheid South Africa 2. Attack of the Killer Newspapers! Tabloids Arrive in South Africa 3. Black and White and Read All Over: Tabloids and the Glocalization of Popular Media 4. Not Really Newspapers: Tabloids and the South African Journalistic Paradigm 5. The Revolution Will Be Printed: Tabloids, Citizenship, and Democratic Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa 6. Truth or Trash? Understanding Tabloid Journalism and Lived Experience 7. Often They Cry with the People: The Professional Identities of Tabloid Journalists 8. Conclusion: Telling Stories Notes References Index