Political Economy of Media Transformation in South Africa
Publisher: Hampton Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cresskill, NJ
Format: Paperback; Hardcover
Number of pages: 314
ISBN-13: 9781572739918
Description: This volume is the first book-length examination of the political economy of media transformation in South Africa. By locating South Africa within continental and global contexts of changes and with theoretical incisiveness and praxis-oriented understanding, authors depict a media system at the forefront of transition both in terms of shifting representations of race and class and in terms of ownership and readership changes. Chapters explain the idea and emergence of black economic empowerment and its adoption by the media industry as well as the way in which black labor unions took ownership of South Africa’s biggest companies.

Topical issues include the controversial flux of identity, vagaries of regulations, changes to state-owned enterprises and to print, broadcast media, and telecommunications corporations. A unique component of this book that is also hitherto untreated by others is treatment of the pivotal role of leading advertisers both in the way they they challenged racial stereotyping and helped forge changes in media depiction of racial groups. 

This book is an authoritative reference available to scholars of media, business, sociology, political economy, and African studies who desire more than a linear presentation of issues pertinent to media transformation in South Africa shortly before the end of and after apartheid.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgements; title: 1) * Political economy, representation, and transformation in South Africa; title: Anthony A. Olorunnisola, Keyan G. Tomaselli, & Ruth E. Teer-Tomaselli; title: 2) * A Continental Perspective on the transformation of South Africa's Media and Communication ** Policies; title: Anthony A. Olorunnisola &George W. Lugalambi; title: 3) * Political Economy of Racial Stereotyping in Advertising; title: Alexander Robert Holt; title: 4) * Structural Process of Reform as an Influence on Advertising; title: Alexander Robert Holt; title: 5) * Identification in Transformation: An Overview of Media Discourses; title: Herman Wasserman; title: 6) * Transforming State-Owned Enterprises in the Global Age: Lessons From Broadcasting and  ** Telecommunications in South Africa; title: Ruth Teer-Tomaselli; title: 7) * Political Economy of the Transformation and Globalization of South Africn Media 1994-1997; title: Keyan G. Tomaselli; title: 8) * Economic Analysis of Black Economic Empowerment in the Media Industry 1994-1999; title: Mashilo Boloka; title: 9) * Unpacking Black Economic Empowerment: The Case of New Africa Investments Limited; title: Iain Evans, Ayesha Mall & Narushka Moodley; title: 10) * Structure of Content: The Political Economy of Die Burger Western Cape, 2004-2005; title: Gabriel J. Botma; title: 11) * Political Economy of Media Transformation in South Africa and the next Frontier; title: Anthony A. Olorunnisola & Keyan G. Tomaselli