Frames and Marginalisation of Counter-hegemonic Voices: Media Representation of the Land Debate in South Africa

New features of media imperialism: The South African online media and the coverage of the Ukrainian war

“…It is primarily the ownership patterns and advertising that locates the South African commercial media in the economic base and societal context in which it is produced (Curran, Gurevitch & Woollacott, 1982). Furthermore, this media has remained concentrated and stuck in the apartheid economic logic through its control by four dominant conglomerates: Media24, Arena Holdings, Sekunjalo Independent Media, and Caxton (Radebe & Chiumbu, 2022). Govenden (2022) posits that even by the C4 measure of concentration, the South African media sector has remained consistently concentrated at a relatively high level.…”

“…2 online news publications, followed by Arena Holdings (8,67 million), Independent Online (7,31 million), Broad Media (6,62 million) and Caxton CTP (5,91 million). 1 This demonstrates that monopolistic features and concentrated media power have visibly migrated to online news (Radebe, 2022).…”

“…Of course, the rise of China, for example, has enabled numerous critics of the term, such as Sparks (2012), who argues that cultural imperialism no longer depends on a single global centre with the emergence of competition between different states. Of course, a concept such as coloniality of knowledge in media studies (Chiumbu & Radebe, 2022) denotes the dominance the Western knowledge system attained, inter alia, through colonisation and "persistent intellectual and cultural imperialism that has marginalized and, in some cases, eradicated alternative knowledge systems, social structures, organizations and ways of working and organizing" (Manning, 2021(Manning, :1208 -precisely the reason why the decolonisation discourse within the field of media studies remains pertinent. Some scholars argue that "white supremacy" is still "embedded in academic spaces and academic culture" and that academia generally "is organized around whiteness and the Global North, demonstrating the importance of decentring whiteness in these fields" (Mohammed, 2022:7).…”

“…At the heart of media imperialism are critical political economy of the media (CPEM) theories that are useful for analysing the economic base and the superstructure that shapes media practices (Radebe & Chiumbu, 2022). This has been the basis of the argument that the media propagandises on behalf of the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.…”

“…However, on international news, the South African media perpetuates the dominant views of global superpowers. This position should be anticipated, since numerous studies have demonstrated that the media is biased in framing ideological discourses and marginalising counter-hegemonic voices (Radebe, 2020;Radebe & Chiumbu, 2022). Nevertheless, not many have analysed the South African online media's representation of international news by employing media imperialism theories.…”