With media diversity towards democratisation: new forms of societal organisation

Abstract

Introduction Over the past two decades, there has been notable progress in the area of media and ICTs on the African continent. Experts have pointed out a remarkable shift towards d?mocratisation and media diversity on the continent, which has been partly due to the infusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as the internet and mobile telephony, in traditional media. Alternative and new forms of media, such as community and privately-owned commercial radio stations, have steadily emerged and grown in numbers. Many of them have taken advantage of increasingly affordable ICTs to disseminate content in a variety of multi-media formats, for instance streaming and podcasting. A notable development has been the wider use of ICT tools like email, digital imagery and mobile telephony in day-to-day content, generated and disseminated by the media. For example, a news item aired on radio might generate instant public comments that are heard and re-broadcast through radio call-ins, SMS, email or blogs. Public participation is faster and more accessible, leading to diversity of format and, in many cases, diversity of opinion. It can thus be said that the growth and use of new technologies in media created not only new ways of content and resource generation, but new forms of societal organisation. In this paper, the author will discuss the political context in which ICTs and new media are used by civil society for advocacy. Collectively, ICTs refer to a range of technologies and tools, including the convergence of the internet, broadcasting technologies and multi-media. In addition, the term ICT is often used interchangeably with Information Society (IS). ICTs can be contextualised in Manuel Castell's (1996:21) definition of IS as