South Africa offers a rich context for the study of the interrelationship between the media and identity. The essays collected here explore the many diverse elements of this interconnection, and give fresh focus to topics that scholarship has tended to overlook, such as the pervasive impact of tabloid newspapers. Interrogating contemporary theory, the authors shed new light on how identities are constructed through the media, and provide case studies that illustrate the complex process of identity renegotiation taking place currently in post-apartheid South Africa. The contributors include established scholars as well as many new voices. Collectively, they represent some of South Africa’s finest media analysts pooling skills to grapple with one of the country’s most vexing issues: who are we?
For teachers, students and anyone else interested in questions of media, race, power and gender, as well as the manner in which new identities are created and old ones mutate, much of interest will be found within the contributions to this important collection.
Introduction
Identity in theory
Media, youth, violence and identity in South Africa: A theoretical approach Abebe Zegeye
Essentialism in a South African discussion of language and culture Kees van der Waal
'National' public service broadcasting: Contradictions and dilemmas Ruth Teer-Tomaselli
Field theory and tabloids Ian Glenn and Angie Knaggs
Identity in post-apartheid South Africa: 'Learning to belong' through the (commercial) media Sonja Narunsky-Laden
Media restructuring and identity formation after apartheid
Finding a home in Afrikaans radio Johannes Froneman
The Daily Sun and post-apartheid identity Nicola Jones, Yves Vanderhaegen and Dee Viney
Online coloured identities: A virtual ethnography Tanja Bosch
The mass subject in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull Anthea Garman
Expressing identities
Crime reporting: Meaning and identity-making in the South African press Marguerite J. Moritz
Afrikaner identity in a post-apartheid South Africa: the Self in terms of the Other Wiida Fourie
Foreign policy, identity and the media: Contestation over Zimbabwe Anita Howarth
Masculine ideals in post-apartheid South Africa: The rise of men’s glossies Stella Viljoen
Tsotsis, Coconuts and Wiggers: Black masculinity and contemporary South African media Jane Stadler
The media and the Zuma/Zulu culture: An Afrocentric perspective Simphiwe Sesanti
He lova tata icova sesiya vela’: Black masculinity and the tyranny of authenticity in SA popular culture Adam Haupt
Dr Adrian Hadland is a director in the Democracy and Governance research programme at the HSRC. Before joining the HSRC, he was the Political Editor and Assistant Editor of the Cape Argus. He has worked for a number of South African and international news organisations as a political journalist and columnist.
Eric Louw is Director of Communication Programs in the School of Journalism & Communication, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His primary area of research is political communication.
Simphiwe Sesanti is a lecturer in the Department of Journalism at the University of Stellenbosch. He has worked as a journalist – writing for South African and international publications in the areas of politics and arts – for more than ten years.
Professor Herman Wasserman teaches Media, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle, United Kingdom and is associate professor extraordinary in the Department of Journalism, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is editor of the journal Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies.
African Book Publishing Record, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, 2009
"...it [Power, Politics and Identity in South African Media] provides an indispensable guide to media and society in South Africa and will be sure to hold the readers attention throughout." - Jonathan Zilberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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