Reporting drought: framing an anthropogenic natural disaster in the South African mainstream publication, City Press, over three years (2015-2018)
- Authors: Matyobeni, Thandiwe
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: City Press , City Press -- Criticism, Textual , Droughts -- South Africa , Mass media and the environment -- South Africa , Climatic changes in mass media -- South Africa , Press -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143179 , vital:38208
- Description: This study interrogates how the ongoing anthropogenic drought, declared a disaster in five South African provinces in 2015, has been represented by mainstream news media. The news media enables public participation which is vital to climate action and the regulation of harmful neoliberal practices that fuel climate change and are thus necessary to provide information about climate change and to support political interventions. Despite the gravity of the drought crisis, there is a severe lack of public opinion about it and the complex weather patterns to which it is attributed. This study thus investigates how the drought has been framed by mainstream news media in South Africa, confining itself to a single title, the City Press. To analyse representations of drought in the City Press, this study adopts a Foucauldian approach to discourse which considers representations as meaning constructed through language. The knowledge perpetuated in news texts is thus frequently perceived as the ‘truth’ about the drought. This knowledge is imbued with power as those in positions of authority determine what is articulated as truth. Through various institutional practices, journalists limit what is said about the drought, framing it in particular ways and privileging particular voices. What the public learns about the drought (and in turn, climate change) is thus limited by the norms and routines of the journalistic regime and the corporate nature of ownership. Notably, the City Press operates within the neoliberal economic order to which climate change is attributed. This study is located within the Cultural Studies and Journalism Studies paradigms and is further informed by a qualitative methodology and two methods of textual analysis, that is, thematic analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. The sampling process produced a database of 26 news texts published by the City Press between the years 2015 to 2018. Five texts were purposively selected for an in-depth analysis based on a broad thematic analysis as reasonably representative of the discourses that recur. Although the City Press positions itself as a critical purveyor of political information, only three themes recur in the texts. These themes position drought in relation to the agricultural economy and urban infrastructure; foreground the voices of corporate entities; while the climate science behind weather patterns is inadequately interpreted. Any discussion of climate change and alternatives to mainstream economic practices is almost entirely omitted.
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Race against democracy: a case study of the Mail & Guardian during the early years of the Mbeki presidency, 1999-2002
- Authors: Steenveld, Lynette Noreen
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Mbeki, Thabo -- In mass media , Mail & Guardian , South African newspapers , Press -- South Africa , Press and politics -- South Africa , Journalism -- South Africa , Mass media and race relations -- South Africa , Racism in the press -- South Africa , Mass media -- Political aspects -- South Africa , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 20th century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3537 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015572
- Description: This thesis examines the 1998 complaint of racism against the Mail & Guardian, a leading exponent of South Africa's alternative press in the 1980s, and important contemporary producer of investigative journalism. The study is framed within a cultural studies approach, analysing the Mail & Guardian as constituted by a 'circuit of production': its social context, production, texts, and audiences. The thesis makes three main arguments. First, that the claim of racism cannot be understood outside of a consideration of both the changing political milieu, and subtle changes within the Mail & Guardian itself. Significant social changes relate to the reconfiguration of racial and class identities wrought by the 'Mbeki state'. Within the Mail & Guardian, the thesis argues for the importance of the power and subjectivity of the editor as a key 'factor' shaping the identity of the paper, evidenced in its production practices and textual outputs. In this regard, the thesis departs from a functionalist analysis of particular 'roles' within the newsroom, drawing instead on a post-structuralist approach to organisational studies. Based on this production and social context, the thesis examines key texts which deal with aspects of South Africa's social transformation, and which exemplify aspects of the Mail & Guardian's reporting which led to the complaint of racism by the Black Lawyers Association (BLA) and the Association of Black Accountants (ABASA). Their complaint was that the Mail & Guardian's reporting impugned the dignity of black people, and in so doing was a violation of their rights to dignity and equality which are constitutionally guaranteed. However, as freedom of the press is also guaranteed by the South African constitution, their complaint to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) resulted in public debate about these contending rights. My second argument relates to the jurisprudential approach to racism, and the related issue of affirmative action, which informed the complaint against the paper. Contrary to the 'normative', liberal approach to these issues, this thesis highlights Critical Race Theory as the jurisprudential basis for both the claimants' accusation of racism against the Mail & Guardian, and aspects of its implicit use in South African human rights adjudication. The thesis argues that in failing to recognise these different philosophical and political bases of legal reasoning, the media, including the Mail & Guardian, in reporting on these matters failed in their purported role of serving the public interest. The thesis concludes by applying Fraser's critique of Habermas's notion of a single, bourgeois public sphere to journalism, thereby suggesting ways in which the critiques of some of the Mail & Guardian's own journalists could be employed to enlarge its approach to journalism - giving voice to constituencies seldom heard in mainstream media.
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