For the first time since democracy in the classical Greek sense became practically impossible, the Internet's networking facilities are creating opportunities again for all citizens to be active, engaging participants in democracy. Open communication channels to government and fellow citizens can now be a reality that allows people at all levels of society to form part of a vibrant public sphere by exchanging ideas, sharing experiences, spreading ideologies and news, and comparing agendas.

After two decades of democracy, poverty and inequality remain at the heart of the development malaise in South Africa. Despite investor-friendly environments and economic growth forged during the previous administration, recent unrest in the platinum industry highlighted the strained relationship between labour and business, State and society, and the macabre consequences of not paying attention to these tensions. With the strife between labour and business appearing intractable, political and economic challenges evinced by Marikana and consequent events should be seen as the canary in the South African mine, the bedrock of the political economy. This MA thesis of political communication starts from three premises: one, the complex set of social, political and economic processes communicated via the news media invite analysis of national development and can be explored using qualitative analysis of mediated products. As skeins of connectivity, mediated political information structures social imaginaries within a nation, and thus contributes to development trajectories. Two, within political communication processes there exists potential for a ‘Social Justice of Communication’, as theorized by Jurgen Habermas. Three, the growing convergence between the previously separable areas of politics and communication demonstrates the urgent need to address not only conventional media effects, but also the implications of nationwide social exclusion, particularly in the context of the public sphere. Thus, the remit of this thesis is the study of political communication dynamics and the roles and nature of mediated content within the process of national development. This thesis studies media coverage of the Marikana massacre in 2012 and the wage strike led by the Association for Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) in 2014. Political communication in the context of the platinum industry, and how this relates to theories and practices of democracy in South Africa, is analysed using qualitative analysis of online news articles from four national newspapers: The Times Live; The Daily Maverick; The Mail & Guardian and; The Business Day. Using protest event analysis as a prism for exploring political communication, this research investigates indicators of the status quo in South Africa’s democracy, as communicated via the news media.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / The purpose of this thesis is to determine the role played by the media in creating a level of awareness in the public mind, and an associated level of trust and confidence within the legislative arm of government. This is achieved through a qualitative research methodology that includes indepth interviews with experts in the field of political communication, particularly journalists and politicians who are members of parliament. Detailed in-depth questionnaires were also used to ascertain the views of these respondents on the same topic. The research also does a comparative content analysis of two newspapers the Cape Argus and the New Age. The key finding of this thesis is that the state is responsible for its own confidence levels without the role or impact of the media – a view not shared by some members of parliament and communications experts. Indeed, members of parliament feel strongly that the media does not portray a true understanding of the work of parliament and that they should do more than what is currently presented by the media houses across the spectrum in the field of communication.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-95). / The dissertation analyses the rhetorical style of Thabo Mbeki with the aim of evaluating whether his oratory was effective enough to convince his audience to support him. It does this by analysing four of the eleven annual addresses that he delivered at the occasion of the Opening of Parliament during his period in office. Mbeki held the position of President of South Africa from June 1999 to September 2008. The speeches that were chosen for analysis from this period are 1999, 2003, 2006 and 2008. The motivation for these choices is related to critical periods during the Mbeki presidency. Before analysing the speeches, the paper examines the context in detail by briefly outlining Mbeki's political and personal background in order to understand his identity in relation to his rhetoric. The current form of annual address at the opening of Parliament is placed in its historical context It also places the type of speech in context in terms of parliamentary rules and the South African Constitution and does a brief comparison with similar addresses in the United States of America and Britain. A key aspect of the dissertation is to attempt to identify how he possibly failed to gain the support his audience by missing the opportunities that his annual address to Parliament presented. In order to identity the disjuncture between the style and content of the oration and the audience. the dissertation examines the understanding of audience and speculates about the real and perceived audiences in the case of Mbeki's annual addresses. The annual address to Parliament provided Mbeki with an opportunity to speak to the nation. directly through the various forms of media as well as through the members of Parliament that were present at the addresses. The dissertation concludes that, on the basis of the in-depth rhetorical analyses of the speeches and the perception of the audience. Mbeki's form of oration resulted in him appearing distant and aloof to his audience. Mbeki used Eurocentric language and metaphors that the audience was not able to identify with thereby failing to unite the audience in support for him. He failed to use presidential rhetoric to his advantage in his speeches in Parliament but further failed to bolster the rhetorical presidency by not establishing his ethos with the people whose support he depended on in order to secure his position in office. By maintaining a strong adherence to the British notion of a president-in-parliament, he remained aloof and wasted the opportunity that the office of the President provided. While his policies may have been sound. he was not able to convince his audience of this causing him ultimately to fail.

Climate change has a global impact on all sectors of life including politics and the economy; health and food security, social justice and media. There are stark contrasts in the political and scientific debates on climate change. The economic impacts have already gripped the attention of both the political elite and science community, who also recognise the threats on the survival of the human population. Recent global climate change meetings such as the COPs are an indication that politics, and not necessarily science, is at the centre of this environmental challenge. In politics, policy debates are arguments over actions. It is therefore important to understand how the SA government communicates climate change given its status as a leading force in Africa and its insurmountable socio-economic challenges. With a theoretical understanding of Moral Foundation Theory, Steve Vanderheiden’s political theory that addresses climate change justice and framing theory and textual analysis, the researcher analyses President Jacob Zuma’s climate change speeches during COP to identify master narratives, given the president’s visibility and political direction at these high level meetings. This dissertation contributes to the lack of scholarship on how the president communicates climate change within the communication field and general shortage of presidential rhetoric in Africa. Zuma’s rhetoric on climate change indicates that SA’s priority is economic development and this will not be compromised by climate change policy that halts growth in developing nations. Zuma is clear that common but differentiated responsibilities must remain the cornerstone of climate change policy, if fairness, balance and equity are to be realised. He stands by this argument despite growing GHG emissions from some of the developing nations, including South Africa.

Includes bibliographical references. / This mini-dissertation aims to characterize mobile participation in the South African citizen-led Facebook Group, New Political Forum. It also investigates whether the participation on New Political Forum meets Poor's (20 05) criteria for an Online Public Sphere, as adapted from Habermasian concepts of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1976). The study employed content analysis as its methodology to investigate a random sample drawn from all the posts and comments posted to New Political Forum on every other week day during the period 3 April to 3 May 2012. Three levels of coding were performed on the sampled data. The first level of coding used the Facebook API to determine whether the post and comments were posted via mobile applications or other platforms such as laptops and desktop computers. The second level coded the kind of social interaction which the post represented, according to six categories intended to characterise the way in which users used the group to initiate in debate and find information. Lastly the word count of each post was captured so as to establish its size. Findings revealed that 60% of all posts, and 54% of all comments in the sample were posted from mobile applications. This indicates that, during the period of study, although computers and laptops were playing a disproportionately important role (given limited access to these platforms in South Africa), participation via mobile applications nonetheless accounted for the bulk of participation. Regarding the social interactions on the site, during the month in question, 90% of posts either initiated debate or shared information with the group. Patterns of interaction via mobile applications were similar to the kinds of interaction which took place from other platforms. Posts from mobile applications nonetheless included fewer hyperlinks and pictures than other sources did. The major difference between mobile and other forms of participation related to the relative brevity of mobile posts. The mean word count of mobile posts was almost half the mean word count of posts from other platforms. Thus even though mobile posts were more frequently posted; they were very often shorter than the contributions from other sources. Applying Poor's (2005) Online Public Sphere it was found that New Political Forum does qualify to be considered an Online Public Sphere. This is because the group's history, focus and governance by committed volunteer administrators created a space for inclusive political debates and discussions where the identities of the members played a minimal role in influencing the reception of their ideas. It is suggested that information sharing should be added to Poor's criteria because of the role it plays in debate and opinion formation.

This study unpacks the key frames and sources used by the South African print media in their coverage of the ‘service delivery protests’ in 2013. It explores how the frames are linked to each other, how the sources link to each other, and how the frames and sources correlate. The study focuses on print media sources as catalogued in the SA Media database, identifies the most prevalent frames and sources used, and using a hierarchical cluster analysis identifies how frames are related to each other, how sources are related to each other, and how frames and sources correlate. The study found that the most prevalent frames on ‘service delivery protests’ used by the South African print media in 2013 were the war/spectacle frame and the failed democracy frame, followed by the law/crime frame, all of which serve to delegitimise service delivery protests. Local government and police sources were most prevalent. The study suggests that there is still contestation about the kinds of spaces citizens should use for political engagement, and contestation about how power operates at local government level. The media also implies that the South African state is failing, and suggests remedies for these failings.

This study examines the media coverage and public debate that ensued following the publication of The Spear, a painting by artist Brett Murray which depicted African National Congress (ANC) President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed. The objective of the study is twofold. First, to understand how the debate unfolded in media and second, to unpack the public (and ANC) reaction to the media’s reports. The study attempts of contribute to research related to the relationship between media, society and nation building in young democracies, specifically in post-apartheid South Africa. A qualitative content analysis of a purposely selected sample of online news articles and comments formed the basis of the research methodology through which to identify prevalent themes that arose throughout the debate. Through discourse analysis, the study also unpacks how social structures – by these I mean groups, institutions, the economy, laws, population dynamics and social relations – that form the national landscape are created and maintained through the use of language (Gee, 2005: 65). Afrocentricism, media framing and agenda setting, as well as social and cultural identity theories, provide theoretical constructs with which to unpack a number of important aspects inherent in the media’s representation of Jacob Zuma. The findings reveal that while the painting as a metaphor of the shortcomings of an individual was relevant, historic memory paired alongside increasing class and racial tensions in South African society, escalated what otherwise would have been a form of protest art into an issue of racism and disrespect of African/black culture.

This thesis attempts to examine the news coverage of South Africa’s legislative laws passed by the Parliament, by looking at the coverage of print media using qualitative content analysis. The thesis aims to understand the dominant messages being conveyed within the news texts and reader comments, specifically whose voice was represented, who was the intended audience and what the overall tone was. The researcher argues that taking editorial positions, the control of content and toning down of the issues is determined by journalists which they consider doing such as national interest. In this geo-political context of South Africa, the engagement of media in covering the issue of legislative laws places an important area of study. It is the media that reports events, responses, criticisms etc. in relation to the legislative laws, on the basis of which various actors and concerned people make their views about the event. As well, how reporting is done, shaped, framed; what sources have been used in news; what roles journalists play in the news coverage; and how ownership of media differs in news reporting and coverage very much reflects on whether or not and to what extent the newspapers respects legislative laws are interesting questions to be answered. This study is based on the case study of the coverage of New Age and The Times. Despite journalists being expected to serve the national interest of the state, differences can be observed in coverage, reporting and providing spaces to news and articles related to New Age and The Times. This hypothesis also supports the argument projected in the thesis that there are real ideological reasons why the media do not oppose the status quo, based on ideological lens grounded by the state and reporting system could rarely go against the establishments implying to the commitment to patriotism and to the nation which the government represents (Wicker, p. 19 cited in Malek and Wiegand).