Media transformation and new practices of citizenship: the example of environmental activism in post-apartheid Durban

Barnett, Clive (2003). Media transformation and new practices of citizenship: the example of environmental activism in post-apartheid Durban. Transformation(51) pp. 1–21.

Abstract

South African media and telecommunications have been fundamentally restructured in the last decade. Corporate unbundling and black economic empowerment have transformed the ownership of broadcasting, print media, publishing, and telecommunications; new radio and television services have been set up; the SABC has been restructured as an independent public service broadcaster; and a new independent regulatory authority for broadcasting and telecommunications has been established. However, a once vibrant alternative press, closely associated with the mass mobilisation against apartheid of the 1980s and 1990s, has suffered severe decline. New technologies, such as satellite television, the Internet, mobile telephony, and digital media have all rapidly established a foothold in South African communications markets. All of these processes have gone hand in hand with a re-scaling of South African media economies and media cultures. Inward foreign investment in South African media and communications industries has been matched by a 'continental drift' of South African capital into African media and communications markets (Barnett 1999b, Tomaselli and Dunn2001).

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