commbox South Africa

Writing Change: Affirmative Action as a Tool for Newspaper Transformation at the Durban Post

Miriam Leshin

Global Media Journal - African Edition, volume 4, issue 1 (2010), pp. 51-72

"This study explores the use of affirmative action as a tool for transformation in the mainstream English-language press in South Africa through a case study at The Durban Post. It seeks to understand the extent to which the newspaper has transformed its staff, coverage and readership in the eyes of ... more

Medios de servicio público y transparencia: Análisis y medición de su desempeño

Fidela Navarro Rodríguez, Ernesto Villanueva

Quito: CIESPAL, 2nd ed. (2010), 321 pp.

"El estudio de los medios públicos desde la doble perspectiva jurídica y de análisis de desempeño constituye una iniciativa inédita y necesaria. Lo consideramos así porque no hay todavía distinciones conceptuales claras entre lo que son medios públicos, medios de servicio público y medios g ... more

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International Journalism and Democracy: Civic Engagement Models from Around the World

Angela Romano (ed.)

New York: Routledge (2010), ix, 251 pp.

"This book examines different models from around the world of how journalism can support deliberation - the processes in which societies recognize and discuss the issues that affect them, appraise the potential responses, and make decisions about whether and how to take action. Authors from across t ... more

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Language, Cultural and Communication Rights of Ethnic Minorities in South Africa

Last Moyo

International Communication Gazette, volume 72, issue 4-5 (2010), pp. 425-440

"This article focuses on ethnic and linguistic minorities and radio broadcasting in South Africa. It examines the country’s language, cultural and broadcasting policies and their potential impact on the participation of ethnic minorities in radio broadcasting. In particular, special focus is given ... more

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Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century

Efrat Ben-Ze'ev, Jay Winter, Ruth Ginio (eds.)

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2010), ix, 223 pp.

"Silence lies between forgetting and remembering. This book explores the ways in which different societies have constructed silences to enable men and women to survive and make sense of the catastrophic consequences of armed conflict. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, it examines the silence ... more

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South Africa

Libby Lloyd, Jane Duncan

Jeanette Minnie; Hendrik Bussiek (eds.)

Johannesburg: Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA);Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP) (2010), xiii, 273 pp.

South Africa Talks Climate: The Public Understanding of Climate Change

Lucy Neville et al.

London: BBC World Service Trust;British Council (2010), 35 pp.

"Between August and October 2009, the BBC World Service Trust’s Research and Learning Group, funded by the British Council, conducted research in south africa to gauge public understanding of climate change. The research consisted of 16 focus group discussions with south african citizens, and 18 i ... more

Annual Report 2009-2010

Media Development & Diversity Agency (MDDA) (2010), 146 pp.

Racism, Ethnicity and the Media in Africa: Reflections Inspired by Studies of Xenophobia in Cameroon and South Africa

Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Africa Spectrum, volume 45, issue 1 (2010), pp. 57-93

"This paper demonstrates the extent to which the media and belonging in Africa are torn between competing and often conflicting claims of bounded and flexible ideas of culture and identity. It draws on studies of xenophobia in Cameroon and South Africa, inspired by the resilience of the politicizati ... more

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Tabloid Journalism in South Africa: True Story!

Herman Wasserman

Bloomington: Indiana University Press (2010), xvi, 218 pp.

"Less than a decade after the advent of democracy in South Africa, tabloid newspapers have taken the country by storm. One of these papers—the Daily Sun—is now the largest in the country, but it has generated controversy for its perceived lack of respect for privacy, brazen sexual content, and u ... more

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Comparative Media Systems: European and Global Perspectives

Boguslawa Dobek-Ostrowska, Michal Glowacki, Karol Jakubowicz, Miklós Sükösd (eds.)

Budapest; New York: Central European University Press (2010), xiv, 290 pp.

"Leading researchers from different regions of Europe and the United States address five major interrelated themes: 1) how ideological and normative constructs gave way to empirical systematic comparative work in media research; 2) the role of foreign media groups in post-communist regions and the e ... more

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Journalism in the Global South: South Africa and Brazil

Herman Wasserman, Arnold S. De Beer (eds.)

Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, volume 36, issue 2 (2010), pp. 143-287

Religion Macht Frieden: Das Friedenspotenzial von Religionen in politischen Gewaltkonflikten
Inspiring Practice

Markus A. Weingardt

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb) (2010), 480 pp.

Scholarly Publishing in Africa: Opportunities & Impediments

Solani Ngobeni (ed.)

Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa (2010), xxv, 378 pp.

"The proceedings of a conference held at the Africa Institute of South Africa in 2009, this is a major new collection of essays on the state of scholarly publishing in Africa, with a strong emphasis on the situation in South Africa. The conference was convened, and the papers published, in an attemp ... t to influence “policymakers and other relevant stakeholders in developing an enabling environment for scholarly publishing to thrive.” Containing a total of 26 papers – all of them, usefully, preceded by abstracts – content is arranged under seven sections: (i) The State of Research Publishing in Africa, (ii) The State of Scholarly Publishing in Africa, (iii) The Challenges of Book Distribution, (iv) The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Scholarly Publishing, (v) Alternative Publishing Models, (vi) The Politics of Peer Review in Scholarly Publishing, and (vii) Scholarly Publishing and Intellectual Property Development in Africa. While the majority of the contributors are from South Africa, other contributors include Kenyan veteran publisher Henry Chakava, James Currey of James Currey Publishers, Mary Jay, Chief Executive of the Oxford-based African Books Collective, and a number of academics from the West African region. The book is particularly strong in overviews of scholarly publishing in South Africa, covering both book and journal publishing. It offers some interesting discussions and fresh insights about alternative publishing and distribution models, with articles reporting about new initiatives and strategy approaches, and also including papers on the politics and practise of the peer review process, and on South African intellectual property rights. One or two papers, by academics from other regions of Africa, unfortunately are weak and poorly informed about the current state of scholarly publishing in Africa, for example citing literature that goes back to books and articles published in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the book can be seen as a useful companion to ‘African Scholarly Publishing Essays’, edited by Alois Mlambo, and published by African Books Collective in 2006." (Hans M. Zell, Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa, 3d ed. 2008, nr. 2581) more

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L'Église Catholique en Afrique;The Catholic Church in Africa;A Igreja Católica em África

Paris: Oeuvres Pontificales Missionaires (OPM);Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), 24th ed. (2010), 775 pp.

Children's Views Not in the News: Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2009

Ronell Naidoo

Melissa Meyer; William Bird (eds.)

Johannesburg: Media Monitoring Africa (2009), 32 pp.

Media on the Move: Migrants and Minorities and the Media. 4th Symposium Forum Medien Und Entwicklung (FoME)

Christoph Dietz, Petra Stammen (eds.)

Aachen: Catholic Media Council (CAMECO) (2009), 84 pp.

"The symposium focused in three sections on migration and ethnic minority media coverage within Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and South-Eastern Europe. Special attention was paid to concrete experiences regarding the strengthening of ethnic and diversity media and the potentials as we ... more

Media Sustainability Index 2008: Development of Sustainable Independent Media in Africa

Leon Morse (ed.)

Washington, DC: IREX (2009), xix, 411 pp.

Beyond Broadcasting: The Future of State-Owned Broadcasters in Southern Africa

Guy Berger

Fackson Banda; Jane Duncan; Rashweat Mukundu; Zenaida Machado (contrib.)

Grahamstown: Highway Africa, School of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University;Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2009), 65 pp.

"Digital communications technology does many new things. Its spread means that it is no longer a case of a tiny minority of professionals and politicians having a monopoly on mass communication. Implicit in the observations of this report, is the recognition that - amongst other things - digitisatio ... n also disrupts old boundaries between inter-personal and mass communication. What used to be the subject of, or product of, communication between a few individuals, can increasingly be put into the public sphere. Much of this content remains personal in quality, despite it being public in availability. But there is also much that is of public interest. In some ways, this therefore threatens those institutions supposed to be specialising in public interest information. In other ways, it can help them not only reinforce this mission, but to also take a step towards expanding their role into becoming wider public interest content and commun-ications agencies. They can, in short, be the motive force that pulls personal conversations into focussing on journalism that is of common public interest. That image of leading the transformation of mass communication is, however, just one of the scenarios outlined in this report. The others point to lesser roles, even including extinction. It should be noted that scenarios are not predictions of the future, but attempts to highlight a range of possible options. They help guide action in one or other direction. The complication is that digitisation and all that comes with it can deal a surprise to even the best-considered scenario possibilities. Who would have thought that a search engine company (Google) could become such an effective player in the advertising arena? Or that newspaper newsrooms would start hiring video-capable staffers, or that some cell-phone companies would move into distributing content? Could anyone have guessed that a company like Twitter could attract and burn millions of dollars of investment without even a proper business plan about how it intends to make money? The digital revolution, if it is to succeed, needs to have top quality cadres in the newsrooms. In the face of these kinds of developments, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands and take a come-what-may approach. That’s preferable to the illusion of controlling and managing the process. At the same time, between these two extremes of paralysis and over-planning, there is a broad direction that can be identified and pursued. We may not know exactly where we are going, but - as this Report seeks to do - we can look at where we are and what’s immediately ahead. More fundamentally, however, there’s worth in remembering from whence we come. In other words, while looking at the present and near-present, and keeping an eye on what future scenarios we can imagine, we can hold onto our values. In the context of public broadcasting, these values are - in a nutshell - to focus mass communications on deepening democracy and development. These public interest values remain all the more valid in a time when the historical informational “service” model is being expanded to also function as a public interest communicational mode. Keeping these ideals aloft helps state-owned broadcasters steer a course between delivering government-interest and commercial-interest content. They help to define the meaning of universal access in the face of financial pressures and socio-economic divides. They empower people to see the big picture and to bring concerted action to bear on it. In sum, they help us reinvent “public service broadcasting” in a fashion appropriate to its contemporary possibilities. Roll on digitisation in Southern Africa - and the transformation of at least some state-owned broadcasters to become leaders in this process." ("Summing up", page 53-54) more