|
Article Excerpt
Abstract: South Africa's mainstream print and broadcast media have attained a central role in shaping the discourse about HIV/AIDS as a result of their elevated role in politics after apartheid. Studies of media coverage of HIV/AIDS, however, have shown that despite the horrific impact of AIDS in South Africa, until recently national media coverage (both the extent as well as the content)--with few exceptions--does not reflect the urgency of the crisis. Instead, media coverage focuses primarily on conflicts around HIV/AIDS policy. In this essay we want to explore some of the reasons for this as well as the consequences this has had for AIDS politics. We show that while it is true that often lack of resources, "AIDS fatigue", racial tensions in newsrooms, and the conflict frame (between the state and AIDS activists) are relevant explanations for the deficient coverage of HIV-AIDS, they don't tell us much. Instead, we suggest that the concept of framing can provide us with more insight into the why of coverage. Coverage of AIDS disproportionately deflects to the political battles and blunders that have accompanied the disease's spread. When it does break with that frame, the crisis is often defined very narrowly as a health issue rather than an issue of socio-economic inequality. We suggest that President Mbeki's framing of the crisis has a censoring effect on the media, while TAC's complex relation with the media means there is often a disconnect between what TAC is saying and how its demands are being represented in the media, resulting in little effort having been given to reporting and analyzing AIDS' devastating political economy.
INTRODUCTION
South Africa has been one of the countries hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, with approximately 5.5 million South African adults and children living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2005. [1] AIDS in South Africa has drawn considerable public debate and media attention, not only because of its high rates of infection but also as a result of the South African government's response to the crisis and the pivotal role played by South African AIDS activists. Central to these debates have been efforts by various actors to frame the epidemic and society's response to it in particular ways. The media, AIDS social movement organizations (particularly the Treatment Action Campaign or TAC), and the state (particularly President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang) have been key actors in this regard.
This paper analyzes the place of the media in AIDS policy discourse and activism in South Africa. It discusses the relationship between the news media, TAC, and the state using the concept of framing as a lens through which to analyze the roles and impact of news media as a space of interest articulation and deliberation, and in mediating democratic debate in the public sphere. We argue that the discourses in the South African media around HIV/AIDS have limited the type of information that is presented to the public as a whole, as well as put constraints on the kinds of democratic debate taking place over an effective societal response to HIV and AIDS.
South Africa's media, especially the country's mainstream and print media, have attained a central role in shaping the discourse about HIV/AIDS as a result of their elevated role in politics after apartheid. Studies of media coverage of HIV/AIDS, however, have shown that despite the horrific impact of AIDS in South Africa, until recently national media coverage (both the extent as well as the content)--with few exceptions--does not reflect the urgency of the crisis. Instead, media coverage focuses primarily on conflicts around HIV/AIDS policy.
In this essay we want to explore some of the reasons for this as well as the consequences this has had for AIDS politics. We will do so by first outlining the main frames through which AIDS are constructed. We will provide analyses of the frames utilized by the TAC and by President Mbeki (as the most senior representative of the South African state). The essay will then summarize the main findings from existing studies on media coverage of the epidemic. Finally, we will speculate on the frames that are excluded from coverage. We argue that while it is true that often lack of resources, "AIDS fatigue", racial tensions in newsrooms, and the conflict frame are relevant explanations for the deficient coverage of HIV/AIDS, they don't tell us much. Instead, we suggest that the concept of framing can provide us with more insight into the why of coverage. Coverage of AIDS disproportionately deflect to the political battles and blunders that have accompanied the disease's spread. When it does break with that frame, the crisis is often defined very narrowly as a health issue rather than an issue of socio-economic inequality. Below we suggest that President Mbeki's framing of the crisis has a censoring effect on the media, while TAC's complex relation to the media means there is often a disconnect between what TAC is saying and how its demands are being represented in the media, resulting in little effort having been given to reporting and analyzing AIDS' devastating political economy. [2]
MEDIA AND MOVEMENTS FRAMING POLITICS
There is general agreement--both among scholars, journalists and editors as well as political actors--that media play a central role in interest articulation and deliberation in democratic society; in particular "how ideas emerge, diffuse, and affect policy." [3] Some scholars have identified this process as "mediated deliberation." [4] According to this view, "professional communicators" are at the heart of deliberation. These professional communicators are identified as journalists and reporters, writers, commentators, and television pundits, as well as public officials and selected experts from academia, think tanks, and civil society organizations. They "... not only help policy experts communicate with each other, but also assemble, explain, debate, and disseminate the best available information and ideas about public policy, in ways that are accessible to large audiences." [5]
The key issues for mediated deliberation are: "How well do professional communicators represent and serve the public? Do they convey information and ideas the public needs for developing informed policy preferences? Or do they, to a significant extent mislead citizens and distort public opinion?" [6] Linked to ideas about interest articulation and deliberation is the concept of "framing." [7] What we term the "news" is never a clearly and previously defined object of which the media present a straightforward, unproblematic transcription. On the contrary, the "news" is a construction. It is constituted by its presentation in the media. To be reported as news, actions have to be translated into events, and then into a "story." Recognition of an issue as newsworthy, the selection of specific events and topics, the context explicitly present or assumed, and the positive or negative judgment implied by a news report all emerge from media coverage rather than being inherent in behavior and reported word for word. [8]
A journalist writing a news report operates on the basis of background assumptions of knowledge and evaluation, commonly referred to by scholars of the media as a frame. The concept of frames, derived primarily from the work of Erving Goffman, denotes "schemas of interpretation" or "action-oriented sets of beliefs and meanings" that enable individuals to render meaningful occurrences in their life and the world at large. [9] Frames were first applied to the analysis of the news media by Gaye Tuchman (1978), and have been used by media scholars to describe the background of news stories.
Using a frame, a journalist can represent events as part of a coherent larger reality within which readers and viewers can comprehend them. The frame adopted in a media account shapes the way particular details are presented and provides the broader context for the story. Frames are often presented in media analysis as something adopted relatively unreflectively by journalists and shared by their audience. [10] They do not appear to either journalists or audience as social constructions but as primary attributes of events that reporters are merely reflecting. News frames make the world look natural. They determine what is selected, what is excluded, what is emphasized. [11] For media scholars, frames provide a reflection of reality but are not viewed as the product of the active construction of reality.
The concept of frames found its way into studies of social movements also following Goffman's formulation, but has been adopted more widely by social movement scholars than by media scholars. [12] Within the social movements literature, collective action frames serve to organize and simplify experience, to motivate action on the part of potential adherents and constituents, to demobilize antagonists, and to justify the movement's agenda. Taking into account cultural frames, including shared meanings, symbols, and discourses allows social movements to be viewed not merely as carriers of ideas and meanings drawn from existing ideologies or structural arrangements, but as signifying agents actively engaged in the production and maintenance of meaning for constituents, antagonists and observers. [13] Snow et al., show that this productive work may involve the amplification and extension of existing meanings, the modification of old meanings, and the generation of new meanings. [14]
While social movements adopt the task of framing issues for their constituents and target audiences, the media play the double role of framing the issues and framing the social movements promoting the issues. Many potential recruits and sympathizers among the public become aware of movements and their issues primarily through the media. The media not only provide information but also create for them the frame within which they perceive and perhaps assimilate a movement's message. Media framing of the issue can support or undercut the legitimacy of a movement's claim by the way it presents the issue, and media framing of a movement's actors can likewise affect the legitimacy of those actors to press the claim. [15]
For these reasons, few movements can afford to ignore the media or disdain their attention but it is almost always a fraught relationship. Even if a movement succeeds at getting the media's attention, it has no guarantee that a story will present its own view of its cause or of its activists. News reports rarely present the background or structural causes of problems, but rather center on events and individuals. They often present a movement through portraits of colorful and articulate individuals. As Charlotte Ryan explains, such portrayals can fail to convey the movement's message for at least three reasons: they may make the movement appear smaller than it is, involving only a few people; the more articulate or colorful activists ("media stars") may not be representative of the constituency the movement claims to mobilize; and an account concentrating on individuals is not likely to address a problem's systemic causes. [16]
Because they are weaker participants in such cultural contests, movements cannot normally expect that their message will be reflected unquestionably in the media's frame(s), but can only hope that it will be presented at all. At best, they can hope that they will succeed in moving the discourse to a point where their frame is admitted as a contender and the dominant frame is recognized as susceptible to challenge. [17]
SOUTH AFRICAN MEDIA AFTER APARTHEID
By any mainstream standard, post-apartheid South Africa has a well functioning and diversified media. A wide range of choices for radio, television, and print media are available to an impressive majority of South Africans. Specifically, radio covers ninety per cent of the population and broadcasts in all official eleven languages. The public broadcaster, SABC, operates 20 radio stations, and in addition there are about 15 private radio stations. Over a ten-year period, South Africa's media regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (earlier known as the Independent Broadcasting Authority) has awarded a total of 94 community radio licenses. As for television, coverage is lower but still...
|
