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"With most of the world's population living in states that have begun the process of democratisation, Media-State Relations in Emerging Democracies examines the critical interface between the news media and the state in these countries. What is the media's role in the democratisation process? And how does the state intervene in, co-opt or prescribe the national discourse? Using a series of case studies, including South Africa and the People's Republic of China, this original work proposes a new framework for understanding media-state relations in the world's emerging democracies. Bringing together a wide range of knowledge and literature from multiple disciplines together with personal insights and experiences gained during his career in global political journalism, Adrian Hadland explodes some of the myths of current thinking about the media and democracy and looks ahead to the role journalism ought to be playing in the 21st century"--

In the wake of the outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa in May 2008, in which sixty people died and tens of thousands were displaced, a fierce debate erupted on the role of the media. The focus of the criticism was South Africa's newly-established tabloid press which is accused of fomenting violence and exacerbating tension by publishing inflammatory headlines and posters. But to what extent can the tabloid press really be blamed for aggravating the conflict? The scholarly literature on media effects suggests that direct causality is hard to prove. The accusation says much, however, about media-state- society relations in post-apartheid South Africa; it also raises questions about the state of the public sphere and the role of the media within it. Field work conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council in four South African informal settlement areas affected by the recent violence indicates that the tabloids certainly cannot be blamed directly for fanning the violence. But it does seem to confirm what thousands of protests in the past year have strongly hinted at: there has been a communications breakdown in South Africa at a local level between communities and the state, as well as within communities, which lies at the root of much of the anger and violence. By failing to respond to this breakdown and act on its liberal imperative of providing a "voice for the voiceless", the media may be more complicit than it, or the literature, is willing to acknowledge.

The debate on whether China's relationship with Africa can be characterized as "neo‐imperialist" has focused primarily on the features of the contemporary engagement. This has polarized the field. The debate has not yet made systematic reference to the mechanisms of imperialism through which the original "scramble for Africa" was carried out by colonial powers at the turn of the 20th century. This article carries out this historical comparison, contrasting the imperial partition of Africa around 1880–1914 with current Sino‐African relations. It is evident that there are many similarities, from the multiple agendas of the actors and the role of compradors through to patterns of investment and financing. The article raises questions, however, concerning the utility of the concept of "neo‐imperialism" given its implicit negativity.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-237) ; Daniel C Hallin and Paolo Mancini's Comparing Media Systems (2004) has been hailed as an important contribution to understanding the inter-relationship between the media and political systems. The work was, however, based on a study of 18 stable, mature and highly developed democracies either in Europe or in North America. As an emerging democracy that has recently undergone dramatic change in both its political system and its media, South Africa's inclusion poses particular challenges to Hallin and Mancini's Three Models paradigm. This thesis focuses on the South African print media and tests both the paradigm's theoretical underpinnings as well as its four principle dimensions of analysis: political parallelism, state intervention, development of a mass market and journalistic professionalisation. A range of insights and a number of modifications are proposed. This thesis is based on interviews with South Africa's most senior media executives and editors, a comprehensive study of the relevant literature and 15 years of personal experience as a political analyst, columnist and parliamentary correspondent covering South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. The thesis sheds new light on the functioning and applicability of the Three Models comparative paradigm as well as on the development and future trajectory of South African print media journalism.