CONTESTED SPACES: AN ANALYSIS OF THE

The dissertation tracks the media development and diversity policy positions of the SouthAfrican government with a particular focus on the establishment of the MediaDevelopment and Diversity Agency. It tracks the reasons for the reduction in theAgency’s funding and the curtailing of its mandate. The dissertation argues that apowerful coalition of forces including the commercial media sector and the Departmentof Finance (now National Treasury) impacted on the policy process to drive governmentthinking in a more market-driven direction. It explores the implications of this marketthinking for the deepening of media development and diversity in the country. Further,the research looks at an alternative critical political economy of the media vision – firstly,in terms of how this vision was scuppered in the policy process, but also how it might beresurrected.The critical political economy of the media school argues that development and diversityissues are not unproblematically served by the market and commercially driven mediasystems. Critical political economists of the media call for a number of state interventionincluding anti-monopoly legislation, subsidies for struggling more marginalised mediasectors and so forth. Also, they call for the development of a core non-commodified,citizenship-orientated and inclusive public service media sector.