Knowledge and Ideas in a Context of Power: Rethinking Media Policy and Reform in Southern Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/0304-615X/2302Keywords:
Media reform, global actors, ideas, interests, coloniality, postcolonial theoriesAbstract
The discourse of media reform emerged in southern Africa in the early 1990s on the back of a 'democratisation agenda' supported by policies by Western donors. While much academic attention has been paid to the analysis of media reforms in the region within democratisation and globalisation frameworks, less sustained analysis has been made in examining the role of bilateral and multilateral donors, in conjunction with various Western epistemic communities, in pushing a neo-liberal media reform agenda, which this paper argues is a continuation of the developmental project that started in the 1960s. In addition, discourses framing media reform policies and the manner in which domestic (read southern African) policy elites are incorporated into this neo-liberal transnational project have not been subject to systematic inquiry. This paper will dialogue with two conceptual positions: coloniality theories and postcolonial approaches to argue that the 'media and democracy' agenda, as a modernity project, has been an imposition of ideas and priorities from Western actors to advance certain material interests. In conclusion, this paper provides alternative ways of (re)conceptualising media reform in southern Africa.
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