Journal of African Media Studies - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2012

The tabloid news genre has been chastized for depoliticizing its public by causing cynicism about the democratic process and lowering the standards of rational public discourse. Counter-arguments point to the alternative public sphere offered by popular media such as ‘tabloid TV’ which is the focus of this study. The ‘tabloid TV’ genre is relatively new in Zambia and in the African context in general. This article sets out to examine the rapid rise in popularity of the Zambian private television station, Muvi TV. It examines Muvi TV’s main evening news as an example of the ‘tabloid TV’ news genre vis-à-vis the criticisms levelled against tabloidization. The article presents results from a reception study of viewers in the capital city, Lusaka. A three-stage qualitative study was carried out, consisting of a thematic/content analysis of news bulletins, focus groups and individual, semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that audiences attach greater credibility to Muvi TV’s news broadcasts than those of the public broadcaster, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC). As such, Muvi TV can be seen to fulfil a political function despite its sensationalized approach.

Zimbabwean journalists and civil society activists in the diaspora have employed humour not merely to mock or ridicule but to conscientize people, and to raise attention for and awareness of the situation in Zimbabwe, including the social, economic and political realities and everyday life concerns and hardships experienced by ordinary people in the country. This article explores how diasporic Zimbabweans have made use of the freedoms in their current locations and of new media and other means to express their dissatisfaction with the Zimbabwean government and the state of affairs in their home country through satire and related forms of political humour. This article focuses particularly on the dissemination of cartoons and satirical messages from liberal host countries through the Internet. It is argued that political humour in the Zimbabwean diaspora has a counter-discursive function and serves as a ‘medium of communicating dissent’.

In June/July 2010, South Africa successfully hosted the FIFA Soccer World Cup, the largest sporting and media event on earth. It was the first time the mega-spectacle was held on African soil. It offered the host country the opportunity to showcase it as a successful ‘African event’, hereby celebrating contemporary African culture while simultaneously challenging commonly held prejudices about the continent. Within South Africa itself, the event – as was the case with previous such mega-events like the 1995 Rugby World Cup – created imaginaries of a cohesive, shared national identity. And yet, when one explores the contours of the (mediated) public debate leading to the hosting of the 2010 event, it becomes possible to see the cohesion as transient in a country in which a segregated racial past keeps lurking beneath the surface of a fractured post-apartheid transition. This article critically examines one site of public contestation ahead of the hosting of the World Cup: the debate around the merits of building the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town for the semi-final match as it was framed by readers of the Cape Argus newspaper in 2007 through published short message service (SMS) messages. A framing analysis of the text messages reveals the different ways in which the stadium emerges, not just as a piece of infrastructure but as an embodiment of the conflicting racial, class, political and sporting identities in the Western Cape and South Africa more broadly.

BEYOND ENCODING/DECODING: ZOMBIES, WITCHCRAFT AND STAMMERING NORMATIVE THEORY

BEYOND NORMATIVE APPROACHES: EVERYDAY MEDIA CULTURE IN AFRICA, UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AND THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, 27–29 FEBRUARY 2012

This article examines the management, economics and political economy aspects of the Zimbabwe music industry. It compares management and policy practices in South Africa with those in Zimbabwe and identifies gaps that need to be filled in developing an epistemology of management and economics in the Zimbabwe music industry. Some of the issues identified include the importance of strategy – especially an industry strategy – in developing music business, the interaction between majors and indies, the significance of intellectual property rights (IPRs) for this industry, the role of government policy in nurturing a vibrant music industry and the role of stardom in creating a sustainable competitive advantage for musicians. A number of weaknesses in the Zimbabwe music industry were identified such as lack of an industry strategy, lack of coherent statistics on the music industry and a need to develop the organizational infrastructure of industry associations. The article concludes by urging researchers to complement the basic business disciplines with critical political economy, sociology of creative labour industries and cultural studies in order to produce work that focuses on the musicians as primary producers and attempts to improve their position in society

Beyond playing its major role of informing, educating and entertaining, the press in different contexts, cultures and dispensations remains a major propaganda tool, and hence its use and abuse by proprietors, political and government elites, and people of influence in society. The clamour to establish and sustain a newspaper or a chain of publications becomes understandable even when the challenges are great. Whereas the desire to promote vibrant nationalism, challenge autocracy in different forms, or pursue a cause that the proprietor strongly believes in could be central to the founding of a newspaper, the use to which it is put – which oftentimes could be the hidden motive for its establishment or a manifestation of the derailment of the original purposes – has provoked interest in probing the motives for newspaper ownership. As the oldest surviving privately owned newspaper in Nigeria, the Nigerian Tribune (NT) provides a classic example of how newspapers come to serve a common cause while at the same time projecting the personal ambitions and interests of their founders. This article examines the challenges of private newspaper ownership in Nigeria using the NT as a case study. The article is situated within the context of theories on the political economy of media with emphasis on the propaganda model. It argues that in spite of NT’s contribution to the nationalist struggle and the process of nation-building, the newspaper was a potent political weapon in the hands of its owner. The use to which it was put by the successor-owner lends further credence to this claim. The article concludes that among other factors, a combination of dynamism and ideologically driven partisanship is needed to sustain newspapers and improve their effectiveness.

Relations between the media and government in Nigeria have historically been conflictual. Nevertheless, the Nigerian media has played important roles in the country’s struggles to free itself from the shackles of colonialism and military rule. A national desire for disengagement from decades of military dictatorship, however, took away the usually critical edge of the Nigerian media once the democratic dispensation got underway. But as the post-transition euphoria gave way to realism, government and media relapsed into their old animosity. This article argues that the initial indifference to certain undemocratic tendencies – especially of the Obasanjo administration in the name of not ‘rocking the boat’ of the new-found democracy – did set a new ambience, resulting in government becoming too sensitive to criticism. The article posits that the initial ambivalence of the media towards the government could have inflicted more harm on the democratic project than good, and was responsible for the manner in which the government responded by the time it regained its critical edge. It contends that the media should at all times remain faithful to its watchdog role, hereby assisting in strengthening the country’s democracy.

REFLECTING ON REPORTING AND JOURNALISM

REPORTING CONFLICT, JAMES RODGERS (2012) Basingstoke: Palgrave,154 pp., ISBN: -13: 978-0-230-27446-4. £14.99

JOURNALISM STUDIES: THE BASICS, MARTIN CONBOY (2012) London: Routledge, 196 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-58794-5 £13.99

BITTER ROOTS: THE ENDS OF A KALAHARI MYTH (2010) 71 MINUTES, DIRECTED BY ADRIAN STRONG, DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES