"Although there are numerous publications on mass communication available, this one deals, in one volume, with all the basic elements and some of the major issues of mass communication pertaining to the new South Africa. This exceptional book gives the reader an extensive and comprehensive overview of the South African mass communication scene. It describes the development mass communication as it unfolded during the colonial and apartheid years. It then offers an analysis of the restructuring of mass media systems in the democratic decade of the 1990s and gives an assessment of expected trends in the millennium ahead." (Publisher description)