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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The African National Congress, the Print Media and its Role during the First Ten Years of Democracy |
Author: | Johnston, Alexander |
Year: | 2005 |
Periodical: | Critical Arts: A Journal of Media Studies |
Volume: | 19 |
Issue: | 1-2 |
Pages: | 12-35 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | press politics African National Congress (South Africa) Politics and Government Literature, Mass Media and the Press History and Exploration |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560040585310031 |
Abstract: | The subject of political communication has received no systematic analysis in South Africa since the transition to democracy in 1994. What is ignored in particular is the 'political' side of the relationships that constitute the competitive struggle to influence and control popular perceptions of key political events. Where there is a combination of some form of liberal democracy with consumer-oriented media, an increasingly mediated political public sphere will develop. However, there can be many national attributes of politics, ideology, culture and economy, which will adapt and retard such developments. This is the situation in South Africa, where the dominant force in politics, the ANC, appears at times to reject and at others to adopt and adapt mediated politics. At best, the ANC's relationship with the political print media has been distant and neurotically suspicious; at worst, pathologically hostile. Journalists and editors, for their part, regard the ANC at worst as having one-party ambitions to stifle and suppress freedom to criticize and hold the government to account. Each regards the other as incompetent in communicating with each other and the public. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |