Explaining public service broadcasting entrenched politicization: The case of South Africa’s SABC

Abstract

Public service broadcasting is the terrain par excellence within today’s media systems on which political power and media logic interact and overlap. This study will argue that public service broadcasting politicization arising in certain democratic regimes cannot be effectively explained if attention is uncritically paid to the same theoretical grounds upon which media scholars rely to study the corresponding phenomenon in the West. By relying on content and legal analysis of the proceedings concerning five terrestrial channels by the Broadcasting Complaint Commission of South Africa between 1994 and 2014, and on three interviews with civil society representatives, the article will discuss the concept of entrenched politicization as a more proper analytical tool to assess subtler forms of media politicization.

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