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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The African National Congress, the Print Media and its Role during the First Ten Years of Democracy
Author:Johnston, AlexanderISNI
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]
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