Globalized Values and Postcolonial Responses

Abstract

Globalization has had a far-reaching effect on media technologies worldwide. Concomitant with this global spread of media forms, liberal views of the media’s role in a democracy have been exported to countries outside the West. In scholarly debates, attempts are increasingly made to globalize media ethics on the basis of a search for universal ethics. However, reactions against western, liberal-democratic views of the media’s role in society in postcolonial African countries have indicated that the dominant liberal framework is not universally applicable. Against the background of attempts to globalize media ethics and in the light of African responses against liberal-democratic frameworks, this article provides an illustration of the tension between different normative frameworks in a postcolonial context. It takes the South African media environment as an example of how different normative media frameworks may collide. An overview is given of the development of normative media ethical frameworks during the first decade of democracy in South Africa, as part of the shift towards self-regulation that the media underwent after the era of oppressive state regulation. Against the background of the conflicts that have marked the media’s relationship with government during the first decade after apartheid, as well as critical debates about the media’s roles and responsibilities in a new democratic society marked by continued social polarization and material inequalities, the article argues that the current normative frameworks within which the media operate are in need of revision. The article suggests that such a revisionary project could draw on postcolonial theory in order to renegotiate the orthodox media ethical frameworks inherited from western societies and contextualize it within the current historical, (geo)political and cultural juncture in South Africa. In the debate about global media ethics, this revision of South African normative media frameworks may then serve as an example of how western media ethics should be adapted to local contexts.