"Media and Citizenship challenges some assumptions about the relationship between the media and democracy in highly unequal societies like South Africa. In a post-apartheid society where an enfranchised majority is still unable to fundamentally practise their citizenship and experiences marginalisat
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ion on a daily basis, notions like listening and belonging may be more useful ways of thinking about the role of the media. In this context, protest is taken seriously as a form of political expression and the media’s role is foregrounded as actively seeking out the voices of those on the margins of society. Through a range of case studies, the contributors show how listening, both as a political concept and as a form of practice, has transformative and even radical potential for both emerging and established democracies." (Publisher description)
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"Across the global South, new media technologies have brought about new forms of cultural production, distribution and reception. The spread of cassette recorders in the 1970s; the introduction of analogue and digital video formats in the 80s and 90s; the pervasive availability of recycled computer
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hardware; the global dissemination of the internet and mobile phones in the new millennium: all these have revolutionised the access of previously marginalised populations to the cultural flows of global modernity. Yet this access also engenders a pirate occupation of the modern: it ducks and deranges the globalised designs of property, capitalism and personhood set by the North. Positioning itself against Eurocentric critiques by corporate lobbies, libertarian readings or classical Marxist interventions, this volume offers a profound postcolonial revaluation of the social, epistemic and aesthetic workings of piracy. It projects how postcolonial piracy persistently negotiates different trajectories of property and self at the crossroads of the global and the local." (Publisher description)
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"Static: Race and Representation in Post-apartheid Music, Media and Film critically examines music, cinema, social media and the politics of change after apartheid. It cuts across academic disciplines, the creative arts and the media and poses two central questions: Is South Africa changing for the
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better, or are we static? Is there too much static for us to hear each other clearly? Static provides key insights into recent media phenomena, such as Die Antwoord; the 2010 Soccer World Cup; Bok van Blerk; Tsotsi; Kuli Roberts' Sunday World column on 'coloureds'; revisionist film Afrikaaps and the University of the Free State's Reitz video scandal." (Publisher description)
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"Stealing Empire poses the question, "What possibilities for agency exist in the age of corporate globalisation?" Using the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt as a point of entry, Adam Haupt
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delves into varied terrain to locate answers in this ground-breaking inquiry. He explores arguments about copyright via peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms such as Napster, free speech struggles, debates about access to information and open content licenses, and develops a politically incisive analysis of counterdiscourses produced by South African hip-hop artists. From empire stealing through their commodification of countercultures to the stealing empire activities of file-sharers, culture jammers and hip-hop activists, this book tells the story of people defining themselves as active, creative agents in a consumerist society." (Publisher description)
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"South Africa offers a rich context for the study of the interrelationship between the media and identity. The essays collected here explore the many diverse elements of this interconnection, and give fresh focus to topics that scholarship has tended to overlook, such as the pervasive impact of tabl
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oid newspapers. Interrogating contemporary theory, the authors shed new light on how identities are constructed through the media, and provide case studies that illustrate the complex process of identity renegotiation taking place currently in post-apartheid South Africa. The contributors include established scholars as well as many new voices. Collectively, they represent some of South Africas finest media analysts pooling skills to grapple with one of the countrys most vexing issues: who are we?" (Publisher description)
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