The main aim of this study was to investigate which factors are likely to affect the
probability that events of violent collective action are reported by the press in
KwaZulu-Natal. The study hypothesised that the likelihood of violent conflict events
being reported by the press is affected by certain characteristics of the events
themselves, such as their intensity and size, and by the environment in which
events occur, such as their physicai location and the prevailing political context.
The study was limited to the KwaZulu-Natal province where levels of violent
collective action have been the highest in the country over the past decade. This
province is also home to many violence monitoring agencies, which constituted an
important alternative source of information against which the reporting trends of the
newspapers in the province could be compared.
The main source of information used in this study was the Conflict Trends in
KwaZulu-Natal project's database of collective action events, which comprises
events reported by both the press and the monitoring agencies. Data on a total of
3990 violent conflict events was analysed during 1987, 1990 and 1994, in the form
of comparisons between the reporting tendencies of the press and the monitors.
Interviews were also conducted with reporters and editors of the daily newspapers
in KwaZulu-Natal, as well as with selected monitoring agency staff members.
These interviews provided valuable information about how these media operate,
and the factors which constrain their violence reporting activities. The most support was found for the argument that the political context influences
violence reporting by the press. Analyses suggested that in all three years studied,
the press contribution to the database decreased as monthly levels of violent
conflict increased. This was explained in relation to the prevailing political context.
The results also showed that reporting trends changed over time. In the earlier
years, the press did not appear to be more inclined to report events of larger size
and intensity, or events which were close to the newspapers' base. In 1994,
however, this trend was reversed.
There also was no clear evidence that the States of Emergency impacted
negatively on press reporting of violence in terms of the variables studied. In
addition, the study concluded that both the press and the monitOring agencies had
made important separate contributions to the database on violent collective action.
It is, therefore, vital that systematic studies of violent conflict in KwaZulu-Natal
make use of multiple sources of data. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/7684 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Louw, Antoinette. |
| Contributors | Frost, Mervyn. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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