Media and citizenship: between marginalisation and participation
- Authors: Garman, Anthea , Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158383 , vital:40179 , ISBN 9780796925565
- Description: How central are the media to the functioning of democracy? Is democracy primarily about citizens using their vote? Does the expression of their voice necessarily empower citizens? Media and Citizenship challenges some assumptions about the relationship between the media and democracy in highly unequal societies like South Africa. In a post-apartheid society where an enfranchised majority is still unable to fundamentally practice their citizenship and experiences marginalization on a daily basis, notions like listening and belonging may be more useful ways of thinking about the role of the media. In this context, protest is taken seriously as a form of political expression and the media's role is foregrounded as actively seeking out the voices of those on the margins of society. Through a range of case studies, the contributors show how listening, both as a political concept and as a form of practice, has transformative and even radical potential for both emerging and established democracies.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Echoes of colonial discourse in journalism:
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159891 , vital:40353 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02560054.2014.886657
- Description: Last year marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of David Livingstone, the explorer and missionary who is best remembered as an anti-slavery campaigner who presented Africa in humanitarian terms to the British Empire. Today the legacy of colonialism continues to haunt the continent, and the discourses of colonialism can still be heard in media representations of Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2014
The meanings of citizenship: media use and democracy in South Africa
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159901 , vital:40354 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2014.929304
- Description: In 1994, South Africans embarked on a project to create new meanings of citizenship in order to transcend the disenfranchisement and divisions created by apartheid. This article examines the context in which new forms of citizenship are evolving in South Africa and how South African citizens use the media to give meaning to concepts such as “an active public sphere,” “civic agency” and “participatory politics.” The objective of the research is to provide information about the way in which the media contribute to the quality of democracy in South Africa through mediating citizenship in a way that improves prospects for citizens to exert influence over public decisions.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Being South African and belonging: the status and practice of mediated citizenship in a new democracy
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159769 , vital:40342 , ISBN 978-1-84888-186-0
- Description: Democratic South Africa, with its highly inclusive constitution and embrace of all races, creeds and colours, could be understood as having an ideal form of citizenship to be emulated by other nations. At the heart of the 1996 constitution is the eradication of apartheid separation and the provision that all South Africans have shared humanity (‘ubuntu’). The Truth and Reconciliation Commission entrenched three founding critical ideas in public life: the right to talk, the recognition of shared humanity and the impulse to speak out about the horrors of the past. As a result the public sphere is filled with a great outpouring of personal stories and experiences in both the mainstream and popular forms of media. But South Africans continue to be preoccupied with the status of their citizenship; who a South African is and who belongs is uppermost in many public conversations.
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- Date Issued: 2013
Media, citizenship and the politics of belonging in contemporary South Africa:
- Authors: Milton, Viola C , Wasserman, Herman , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159802 , vital:40345 , DOI: 10.1080/02500167.2013.864447
- Description: Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and empirical studies, the articles in this special issue examine issues of citizenship and belonging in South Africa. Questions of belonging and citizenship are neither novel, nor particular to South Africa – they have been high on the intellectual (and popular) agenda internationally since at least the early 1990s. Yet South Africa's history of artificially separating and defining its citizens in the racial regimes of colonialism and apartheid still reverberates today, as is reflected in the continued inequalities marring South African society
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- Date Issued: 2013
The language of listening: the Marikana aftermath
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158904 , vital:40239 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC141563
- Description: Unless you're, say, the National Press Club of South Africa, who decided that the South African rhino was the newsmaker of the year for 2012, there should be no doubt that the Marikana massacre was the biggest news event of last year. Some observers, like the University of Johannesburg sociologist, Professor Peter Alexander, even consider the massacre one of the turning points in South African history. How did the South African media respond to what was evidently a historic moment?
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- Date Issued: 2013
Voice and agency in post-apartheid South African media: young and mediated
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:38361 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC141607
- Description: What does the rising number of service delivery protests tell us about who gets to speak and who gets to listen in South African politics? Do politicians listen to the youth, especially the vast numbers of the un- and under-employed? What role do the youth play in social cohesion, civic action and the future of our young democracy?
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- Date Issued: 2013
Journalism in a new democracy : the ethics of listening.
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2012-09-19
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:577 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008551
- Description: [Conclusion] I started this lecture by recalling how, as a youngster, it was stories that helped me to understand the country I was growing up in, and helped me imagine the lives of others that I did not read about in the media of that time. For journalism in a new democracy such as South Africa to serve more than an elite, for it to enable citizens to actively practice their citizenship through media, for it to treat all South Africans with dignity, it would have to learn to listen across the different lines that continue to keep South Africans apart – journalists would have to learn to listen to the stories of those on the other side of the railway line, the breadline, the picket line, the barbed wire fence. What would this listening mean for journalists in practice? Let me end by returning to the coverage of the Marikana massacre. In a recent interview with Greg Marinovich, the journalist that did the investigation that cast doubt on the official accounts of the events, he was asked if what was needed for better journalism was more investment of resources. ‘Do we need a team (or teams) of journalists to get to the bottom of this?’ he was asked. Marinovich responded as follows: “I wouldn't say that. I think other journalists have been spending more time there than I have (…) It's about opening your eyes and looking at what people are telling you, looking at their stories.”
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- Date Issued: 2012-09-19
China in South Africa: a long affair: Africa rising
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/454594 , vital:75358 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC134108
- Description: Official relations between Africa and China in contemporary times can be seen to have started in 1955 with the first Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, aimed at promoting economic and cultural co-operation. The development of China-Africa relations gained impetus when it became clear in the 1990s that to maintain the "roaring pace" of its economic growth as a result of economic reforms, China would need to look for new sources of energy and natural resources - which it found in Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Submission to Press Freedom Commission (PFC) on Media Self-regulation, Co-regulation or Statutory regulation in South Africa:
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , Steenveld, Lynette N , Strelitz, Larry N , Amner, Roderick J , Boshoff, Priscilla A , Mathurine, Jude , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143571 , vital:38263 , ISBN , https://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/ruhome/documents/JMS Submission to Press Freedom Commission.pdf
- Description: Prof Duncan has outlined the relative merits and demerits of self-regulation, co-regulation and deregulation, with which we are in broad agreement. She has also ably dealt with the three functions of regulatory bodies, namely the setting of ground rules for the industry to ensure best practice; enforcement of these; and adjudication of claims and counter claims re journalistic practice (Duncan 2012, p17). Finally, she has also taken up the issue of the necessity of accepting Third Party Complaints as one of the fundamental mechanisms by which citizens can make complaints on the basis of principle, rather than being personally aggrieved. While we are in broad agreement with her on these issues, we would like to highlight some further points for consideration.
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- Date Issued: 2012
The need for nuance media freedom and regulation
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/454607 , vital:75359 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC134121
- Description: "I think that sometimes the media also positions itself as an opposition to the state. Especially in a situation where you have quite a strong rul-ing party and a weak and splintered opposition, the media assumes an advocacy role which in some cases is healthy but in some cases that can actually distort progress."
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- Date Issued: 2012
A new public sphere?: outstanding issues
- Authors: Wasserman, Herman , de Beer, Arrie
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159142 , vital:40272 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC146261
- Description: It is widely accepted that a healthy public sphere is a necessity for democracy, and that the media can facilitate debate in this sphere. In the years since democratisation in South Africa, the media's freedom to fulfil this role has been jealously guarded.
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- Date Issued: 2003