Book Reviews

Abstract

From the title of the book, one might conclude that the author portrays only a part of the world. Making this kind of conclusion is hasty and can only be dispelled after a complete and attentive read of the 217 pages of scholarly discussions. Herman Wasserman’s Media, Geopolitics, and Power: A View from the Global South does not only present over two decades of the South African media trajectory from the apartheid to post-apartheid eras, it also provides a unique and rich connection between the changes in the South African context and the shifts experienced in the global landscape (with focus on geopolitics and discussions in the media). Most especially, Wasserman makes a genuine case for why what happens in the media landscape within the Global South is of importance to the global media landscape discourse. Specifically, Wasserman notes that the developments in the Global South “can be instructive as to the directions in which global media might be moving” (p. 49). As such, the inclusion of non-Western perspectives in the global discourse must not be “superficial and patronising gestures” (p. 88) as the case has always been. Media, Geopolitics, and Power: A View from the Global South draws upon a decade of Wasserman’s scholarly contributions to the media landscape discourse. The eight-chapter book consists of the transitions witnessed in the South African media landscape from apartheid to democracy, the contestations experienced in the South African media and how it fits in the “global debates about media norms and values and the notion of a global crisis in journalism” (p. 79), and the position of South African media within the shifts in global geopolitics (with special focus on South Africa’s membership of the BRICS and its close relationship with China). In the first chapter of the book, “From Apartheid to a new democracy”, Wasserman provides a descriptive overview of four areas of shift witnessed in the South African media: ownership and editorial composition, attempts to diversify the public sphere, normative and regulatory frameworks, and conceptions of the relationship between media and political power. As captured by Wasserman, most of the transitions in media ownership happened in the print media. These transitions aimed at the racial composition of media ownership NORDICOM REVIEW