Examining media discourses on religious rape in Zimbabwe

Santos

2021

Crime, Media, Culture

Self Cite

Even though corruption by politicians and in politics is widespread worldwide, it is more pronounced in developing countries, such as Zimbabwe, where members of the political elite overtly abuse power for personal accumulation of wealth. Ideally, the news media, as watchdogs, are expected to investigate and report such abuses of power. However, previous studies in Zimbabwe highlight the news media’s polarised and normative inefficacies. Informed by the theoretical notion of deliberative democracy developed via Habermas and Dahlgren’s work and Hall’s Encoding, Decoding Model, this article uses qualitative content analysis to examine how online readers of Zimbabwe’s two leading daily publications, The Herald and NewsDay, interpreted and evaluated allegations of corruption leveled against ministers and deputy ministers during the height of factionalism in the ruling party (ZANU PF). The article argues that interaction between mainstream media and their audiences online shows the latter’s resourcefulness and, at least, discursive agency in their engagement with narratives about political corruption, itself an imperative premise for future political action.

Section: News Media and Political Corruptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political corruption in Zimbabwe: News media, audiences and deliberative democracy

Santos

2021

Crime, Media, Culture

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“…Such a statement can be interpreted by fellow religious members as God speaking through the preacher since he is deemed as a representative of God on earth. Ndhlovu 2020 explains the influence of religion on its followers. However, this scathing attack on abortion is likely to promote clandestine abortion since it discourages fellow religious members from discussing abortion.…”

Section: Abortion and Religionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Zimbabwean news media discourses on the intersection of abortion, religion, health and the law

Nyathi

Media, Culture & Society

2021

Self Cite

Even though abortion has a long history, it remains predominantly contentious due to religious, medical and legal constraints. For instance, in Zimbabwe, abortion is illegal except under limited circumstances. This has resulted in women resorting to unsafe abortion procedures, leading to an increase in individuals and groups calling for the liberalization of abortion laws. It is against this background that this article uses qualitative content analysis and rhetoric analysis to explore how Zimbabwean daily newspapers frame abortion in relation to religion, health and the law. It contends that the newspapers in question assume conflicting positions as the Chronicle largely condemns abortion while the Daily News boldly calls for its decriminalization. The NewsDay and The Herald, on the other hand, relatively tolerate abortion even though in some instances they condemn it. These findings demonstrate the active role of the news media in arguing for and against abortion to influence policy making.

“…The four daily publications under scrutiny represent the extremes of Zimbabwe’s polarised media landscape (Ndhlovu, 2020; Moyo, 2010). The Herald and Chronicle , which are publicly owned but controlled by the government tend to take a ‘Pan Africanist’ and conformist posture towards the status quo which is dominated by the ruling party Zanu PF while the NewsDay and Daily News , which are corporate entities, favour opposition parties and western style liberal democratic politics (see Santos and Ndhlovu, 2016; Chuma, 2005).…”

Section: Journalism’s Normative Posture and Political Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

The democratic deficit in reporting political crises: The case of Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections

Santos

2021

Journalism

Self Cite

Although our impression of the media’s role in a democracy and democratising societies is fairly stable, the situation is fundamentally different under unstable and ever shifting conditions of political crisis. To explore dynamics in the latter scenario we analyse the coverage of Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections by the country’s daily newspapers. This allows us to examine the newspapers’ active role in shaping the conditions of crisis through their interpretation and evaluation of issues and events during the period under study. We use frame and rhetoric analytical tools to analyse front-page stories and editorials, which enables us to explore the dimensions of news media’s agency during the context of crisis and assess the nature and direction of such agency using normative theories of the media in a democracy. We argue that a political crisis can easily polarise news media and subsequently induce them into assuming an active partisan posture in their reportage of political issues and events by using rhetorical discursive strategies not only to persuade the audience to accept their standpoint, but subsequently, to influence their political action in the future, with consequential implications for their functional performance of received normative roles.