Thesis (MA (Journalism) -- Stellenbosch University, 1983. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: no abstract available / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: geen opsomming

This research is premised on the understanding that alternative forms of media emerge to deal with specific ideological projects and, as such, must be seen as satisfying a specific need at a specific point in time. Using the case of a weekly newspaper, The Southern Star which was in circulation from January 2012 to June 2012, this study sought to understand the factors that led to the establishment of the newspaper, what it sought to achieve, how it went about putting that into practice, its message in relation to debates emanating from the ‘Matabeleland Question’ and also the factors that led to the its collapse. In order to address my research questions, I adopted a two stage research design qualitative content analysis and semi structured in depth interviews. In locating the study within the qualitative epistemic understanding of research, it was clear from the qualitative content analysis of 13 editions of the publication and in depth interviews held with 15 respondents that the newspaper was set up with the aim of serving a marginalised section of the population (in this instance the Ndebele) by providing them with a platform to articulate issues affecting them. It also sought to ‘speak’ the ‘unspoken’ within the mainstream media by focusing on Matabeleland identity politics. It achieved this by creating content around the Gukurahundi genocide, Matabeleland development, Matabeleland history and Matabeleland heroes. The newspaper also sought to emancipate the people from the South by advocated for social, cultural, economic and political justice as a resolution to the ‘Matabeleland Question’. However, the newspaper failed to sustain operations due to lack of advertising revenue. As a result of the constraining political environment in which the newspaper operated, potential advertisers were afraid of placing advertisements in the newspaper because of the nature of the content produced, which in view of Zimbabwe’s rival ethnic history, could easily be labelled ethnically divisive. Also, being a new player in the market worked to their disadvantage as prospective advertisers opted to place their adverts in “tried and tested” publications (Zimpapers and Alpha Media Holdings). Additionally, because of poor management, roles were not clearly defined and hence the newspaper failed to operate as a business enterprise. As noted during interviews with junior reporters, there was little or no experience at management level. The paper lacked a coordinated circulation strategy and from inception, was never officially launched, which resulted in the failure to reach significant audiences.

This study is concerned with the constructions of the Tanzanian nation in the press. It has confined its focus, first, to the coverage from 2005 to 2011 on Union Day that marks the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar and the formation of the United Republic of Tanzania and, second, to two prominent Tanzanian newspapers, namely the state-owned Daily News, and the privately-owned The Citizen on Union Day. As the Union remains a contentious issue, the relevance of this research relates to the press’s considerable power to shape understandings and influence attitudes. The study works within a broad cultural and media studies framework and is informed by a constructionist approach to representation and to culture, and to nation in particular. It also draws of journalistic theories of agenda-setting and the normative roles of the press to probe the agendas set by the press on Union Day and to interrogate how the two newspapers construct and frame the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar as nation. The research responds to the question: ‘How has the Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union been represented in The Citizen and Daily News newspapers from 2005 to 2011?’ It employs quantitative and qualitative (thematic) content analysis to investigate the coverage in the editorials and feature articles of The Citizen and Daily News newspapers on Union Day (26 April) of 2005 to 2011. This study finds that the government-owned newspaper, Daily News, publishes more articles related to Union on Union Day than the privately-owned, The Citizen and collaborates more determinedly with the state in the process of constructing the nation. However, both newspapers adopt a collaborative role consistent with the development journalism tradition that endorses an informal partnership between media and the state in the process of development (Christians et al, 2009:201). Both publications tend to emphasise the hegemonic ideology pertaining to Union while giving limited attention to challenges to such constructions. While both newspapers do identify certain problems of the Union and thus exercise a monitorial role to varying extents, it is apparent that the press in Tanzania tends to be largely acritical, perhaps attributable to a long period under single party rule

The media today are under pressure from various fronts including governments, businesses as well as cultural interests. In the developed world, this pressure that led to the emergence of a new form of journalism that puts the demands of the market at the forefront. This commercial oriented journalism gives priority to articles that attract mass audiences like entertainment while it downplays information that promotes debates that is necessary for citizens to be able to have a voice on the issues that affect them. And since participation and discussion are cornerstones of a democratic process, market-driven journalism undermines democracy because it narrows down the forum for debate. As a result, active citizens are turned into passive observers in society. Although several studies about this phenomenon have been done in the western world, the same is happening in Africa because the media face similar challenges as in the West; challenges of globalisation and media conglomeration facilitated by the rapid advancing technology. This study, which is informed by political economy and market-driven journalism theories, notes that the media in Uganda are also faced with these challenges. The study is focused on Uganda’s only independent newspaper, The Monitor. The findings indicate that market-driven journalism is taking root at the expense of journalism that promotes citizenship and debate such as political reporting and opinions. For example, there has been an increase of entertainment, sports and supplement articles in The Monitor as compared to declining political reporting and opinions. More so, investigative reporting has dwindled over the years at the expense of increasing use of press releases. This is because entertainment and sports articles can attract big audiences that the newspaper needs to sell to advertisers. Advertisers are important because they provide financial support to the newspaper. However, in a country where democracy is in its formative stages, public information is necessary not only for citizens to make informed decisions but also to spur economic as well as social development.

Muniz,Altemar da Costa. As Mudanças de Linha Editorial na Folha de São Paulo. 1999. 183 f. , Dissertação (Mestrado em Sociologia) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Ciências Sociais, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia, Fortaleza-CE, 1999. / Submitted by nazareno mesquita (nazagon36@yahoo.com.br) on 2011-11-10T16:32:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Art_1999_AdaC.Muniz.pdf: 7096700 bytes, checksum: 5b508c295333cca509bf91102a94e078 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Josineide Góis(josineide@ufc.br) on 2011-11-11T15:40:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Art_1999_AdaC.Muniz.pdf: 7096700 bytes, checksum: 5b508c295333cca509bf91102a94e078 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-11-11T15:40:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Art_1999_AdaC.Muniz.pdf: 7096700 bytes, checksum: 5b508c295333cca509bf91102a94e078 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1999 / This job tries to explain the changes of opinion of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper in the period of 1979 to 1989 about economical development in the state when showing its publishing line in the political developmental national defense established in 1968 for the support of orientations neoliberal of regulamentations and limitations of state intervention. Based on research in its publishing allied to articles of Folha de São Paulo rebuilt its process of adhesion to the distating ideas of the 1980 decade, relating it with the political and financial changes that the country has been through. We have tried to dismitify its self representations of the newspaper that justified the reorientation of the publishing line as a result of non dogmatical character, flexible, and aware to the worldwide changes of the newspaper, by the analysis of these discursive constructions showed in the publishing, confronted them whit the business and political information of its owners, gotten by interview, accounts of journalists that worked and still work at Folha de São Paulo newspaper, in its financial balances and is studies about the paulista diary in its financial political journalistical aspects. The presenting lecture inserts itself in the process of introduction of comprehension of neoliberal hegemony in the press and in the Brazilian society that has a relatively short space that inhibited and put in its defense of nationalist tendencies shown in the ideal of the academical business elites and politics of the country. / Este trabalho tenta explicar as mudanças de opinião do jornal Folha de São Paulo no período de 1979-1989, sobre a função estatal no desenvolvimento econômico, quando reverte sua linha editorial de defesa da política nacional-desenvolvimentista instaurada em 1968, para o apoio das orientações neoliberais de desregulamentação e limitação da intervenção estatal. Tomando como base da pesquisa seus editoriais, aliado a reportagens e artigos da Folha de São Paulo, reconstruímos seu processo de adesão às idéias desestatizantes da década de 1980, relacionando-a com as transformações políticas e econômicas que o país passava naquele momento. Tentamos desmistificar as auto-representações do jornal que justificavam a reorientação da linha editorial como fruto do cárater não dogmático, flexível e atento às mudanças no mundo do periódico, pela análise de suas construções discursivas, presentes nos editoriais, confrontando-as com informações da atuação política e empresarial de seus proprietários, conseguidas em entrevistas e relatos de jornalistas que trabalharam e ainda atuam na Folha, nos seus balanços financeiros e em estudos sobre o diário paulista em seus aspectos jornalísticos, políticos e econômicos. A presente dissertação insere-se nas tentativas de compreensão do processo de implantação da hegemonia neoliberal na imprensa e na sociedade brasileiras, que em espaço de tempo relativamente curto, inibiu e pôs na defensiva as tendências nacionalistas explicitadas no Constituição de 1988 e no ideário das elites acadêmicas, empresariais e políticas do país.

Text in English / This thesis explores the representation of political conflict in the Zimbabwean press with a specific focus on the The Herald, The Sunday Mail, Daily News and The Standard. The thesis sought to unpack the representation of political conflict in the four selected newspapers and to compare and contrast state-owned and privately-owned press representation of power, succession struggles and factionalism in ZANU PF and opposition MDC. The theory is undergirded by the framing theory and data was analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis. The thesis contends that the representation of political conflict in Zimbabwe was sensational and polarized. With clearly separate agendas, the government controlled press, The Herald and The Sunday Mail; and the privately owned Daily News and The Standard, have drawn upon different framing practices to represent political conflict in Zimbabwe. By selecting to report on a particular issue and silencing another, through choice of certain headlines, and vocabulary employed, they have produced a construction of events in political parties that satisfy their political agendas in an increasingly polarized political environment. The newspapers became associated with diverging political opinions, showing political parties they support. On the one hand, the state-funded media represented ZANU PF in positive light while the opposition, particularly the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was represented negatively, mainly depicting the party as harbouring a regime change agenda. On the other hand, the privately-owned press was critical of the ruling party, ZANU PF and blamed the party for economic problems, corruption, mis-rule, and abuse of human rights. As a result of this partisan representation of political reality by the two press camps, they became directly implicated in the conflicts thereby ceasing to be credible sources of information. This clearly illustrates the enormity of challenges faced by the press in political conflicts in politically polarised environments such as Zimbabwe. The thesis argues that when reporting political conflicts ideological considerations of the press take precedents at the expense of the informational and educational mandate of the press as ethics and professional interests of the press are pushed to the back stage. Contrary to the view that the press is a neutral and impersonal purveyor of information, it is an active participant in the framing of political conflicts and its framing is ideological. The study has broadened the body of knowledge on the framing of political conflicts in polarised political environments. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication Science)

« Presse de qualité » ou encore « presse de référence » constituent autant d'expressions dont les référents varient en fonction du contexte géographique. Le contexte de la presse britannique est caractéristique de la prégnance de la relation entre les médias et la société. Confrontée à l'érosion de son lectorat et aux évolutions d'un secteur médiatique ultra-concurrentiel, la presse quotidienne britannique dite « de qualité » a entrepris des changements durant les années 2000 qui témoignent d'une prise en considération de la pluralité des contextes qui interagissent sur les modalités de son fonctionnement. A partir de 2003, les mutations formelles du Times et de l'Independent tendent à traduire une volonté d'adaptation du journal à l'évolution des modes de vie et plus particulièrement aux habitudes de lecture. En s'appuyant sur un modèle théorique des changements journalistiques sur un temps long ainsi que ! sur des tendances à l’œuvre depuis 1945 au sein de la société britannique, notre thèse analyse les mutations du Times et de l'Independent à l'ère d‟un « journalisme de communication ». En établissant une focale sur le traitement de la chose politique au sein des deux quotidiens analysés, cette thèse vise à explorer les processus de réappropriation des normes des quotidiens dits « tabloids » par les quotidiens britanniques dits « de qualité ». / « Quality press » or « elite press » are expressions which differ according to the geographic context. The context of the British press is typical of the salience of the relation between media and society. Faced with the erosion of its readership and developments in the ultra-competitive media sector, the British daily « quality » press has launched changes in the 2000s that reflect a series of contexts that interact on performance. From 2003, The Times and The Independent’s changes in format tend to reflect a willingness to adapt the journal to changing lifestyles and particularly to reading habits. Based on a theoretical model of journalistic changes over a long time as well as trends in British society since 1945, our thesis analyzes The Times and The Independent’s changes in an era of « communication journalism ». By focusing on the journalistic treatment of politics in the two daily newspapers here analyzed, this thesis aims! to explore the process of the reappropriation of the journalistic standards of the « tabloids » by the « quality » daily newspapers.

Data obtained through content analysis of articles about or concerning President Reagan in Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report during two time periods indicated that no relationship existed between time and variance of news coverage given to Reagan. Three content analysis measures were used: comparison of favorable and unfavorable statements, amount of coverage and number of quoted words. The study is composed of four chapters: Chapter I introduces the study, Chapter II presents the data, Chapter III evaluates the data and Chapter IV summarizes and makes recommendations.

This thesis examines the meanings that residents of the township of Hooggenoeg (in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa) made of the election coverage in the Grocott’s Mail newspaper during 2011 municipal elections in South Africa. In addition, this study also sought to understand the particular set of ‘normative roles’ played by the paper, both with reference to the well-established body of theory about the normative roles of journalism in a democracy, and in terms of the paper’s own conceptualisation of its role in the functioning of local democracy. Grocott’s Mail, the oldest independent newspaper in South Africa, provided extensive pre-election coverage, which included producing and distributing an unprecedented free edition of the paper. The paper also facilitated a town hall debate in order to encourage residents to vote, and empower them to make a more informed choice about their vote. Three qualitative research methods, namely qualitative content analysis, focus group interviews, and individual interviews were used to examine the relationship between the content provided by the paper and the audience’s process of ‘making sense’ and deriving meaning from the content provided. The study concludes that Grocott’s attempt to encourage democratic culture in Grahamstown, in keeping with the more ‘facilitative’ normative roles that the local media can play, was only partially successful. Much of the election reporting subordinated the voices of the ordinary people, and privileged reporting that focussed narrowly on the voting process, and which foregrounded the views of political parties. Overall this coverage largely failed to resonate with the Grocott’s readers who live in Hooggenoeg (a largely ‘coloured’ area of Grahamstown), whose key concerns in terms of their daily life – such as poverty, unemployment, crime, lack of services – seemed, to them, unaddressed by this election coverage and, consequently, was not as engaging or convincing as the publishers/editors had hoped it would be. It can be also argued that Grocott’s narrow conceptualisation of democracy as entailing only public participation in electoral processes failed to cater for how audiences can be made aware of how they can participate in governance beyond the election period.

El objetivo de esta investigación es demostrar la utilización de estrategias de discursivas por parte de la prensa nacional para construir una imagen negativa de las conductas de actores del aparato estatal de bajo rango, como municipalidades y funcionarios locales de provincia. El resultado de estas estrategias es el ejercicio de presión sobre estos actores y sobre quienes tienen autoridad sobre ellos, como el gobierno nacional. Para esto, se escogieron dos casos mediáticos del 2013: la nueva Ley de Servicio Civil y la reducción de transferencia de canon a gobiernos subnacionales. Este trabajo es elaborado en el marco de los Estudios Críticos del Discurso desarrollados por Teun A. Van Dijk (2009, 2006 [1999], 2006 [1997], 1997, 1996, 1990) y Patrick Charaudeau (2003). En los resultados del estudio se evidencia que existe un consenso (Rancière, 2006) en la prensa limeña, tanto en la centroizquierda como en la derecha, sobre la representación de los funcionarios públicos y las gestiones de las municipalidades de provincias como ineficientes e incapaces. En los casos revisados, esta representación se debe a la reproducción de la versión oficial del gobierno nacional, la cual es presentada de manera preferente. / Trabajo de investigación