A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the degree of Masters by Research in Media Studies, Johannesburg, March 2017 / In post-colonial, post-apartheid South Africa, “media wars”1 appear to have become a strong feature. Traditionally, the news media rarely report about other media. Media wars seem to manifest themselves more when news publications subject each other to critical scrutiny. Recent media wars between newspaper companies and editors have highlighted the agonistic pluralist nature of the South African print media which is facing persistent and complex disruptions. This research asserts that a notable feature of these media fights is that they are linked to the battle to gain market share in the South Africa print media market stranglehold by big media organisations. They are often couched in ideological discourses which are constitutive of editors and media owners speaking out publicly about issues internal to the media in order to carry the freight of public attention. The foci of this study will be two-fold: Firstly, it seeks to investigate whether these media wars are related to the broader issues of transformation in the South African print media. Secondly, the study seeks to unravel how some of the country’s leading news publications represent their competitors using editorial platforms and will investigate the editorial motivations behind certain representations. Despite the growing interest in media wars, South Africa is still underrepresented due to a lack of literature published in the field. The main rationale behind the study is to show how the media’s ‘independence’ from political parties plays itself out in ideological discourses found in the tensions between newspaper companies and editors in the period between 2010 and 2015. Two examples or case studies of media fights will be critically examined in this study and a qualitative discourse analysis will be undertaken in order explore the ways in which the media war texts spoke to or problematised the main theories employed in this study, namely: Critical Political Economy (CPE) of the media and Michel Foucault’s material post-structuralism blended with Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘media field’. Keywords: media wars, agonistic media space, market share, ideological discourses, transformation, representations. / XL2018

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While many politicians gain national or international acclaim, domestic political activists are rarely remembered for their dedication and, similarly, their sufferings. More specifically, the acts of female political activists, and the harsh punishments they endure following government pushback, are not appreciated or acknowledged by popular histories. Across Great Britain, the United States, and Argentina, three women played crucial roles in advancing reform against unjust government policies. Josephine Butler (1828-1906) was a pivotal character in repealing laws allowing for the government regulation of prostitution, the Contagious Diseases Acts, in Great Britain. Similarly, Alice Paul (1885-1997) was essential in achieving the ratification of the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment in the United States—granting universal suffrage. Lastly, Azucena Villaflor (1924-1977) was one of the first people, man or woman, to openly oppose the Junta dictatorship in Argentina and openly advocate for the release of information on desaparecidos. Despite advancing such important policy reform, all three women increasingly faced physical suffering, torture or death at the hands of their respective state governments. Amid a lack of media coverage or biased, partial media coverage paired with the direct confrontation of male government leaders, noncombatant activists were unjustly treated in violation of their fundamental human rights. Progressive, forceful voices for positive change are consistently dismissed as crazy, extreme or irrational, rather than praised for their efforts. In exploring the cycle of violence surrounding the treatment of political activists, it appears nationalist histories are often void of past government faults.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-05, Section: A, page: 1918. Adviser: John L. Lucaites. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 14, 2008)."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-253). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-253). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Women's and Gender Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-247).