Afrikaans is very much a black language. The apartheid government’s ploy to construct it as a “white language”, with a “white history”, denied the commonality of the language across race and class.
Paul Ralph, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Facebook has a new, depressingly incompetent strategy for tackling fake news.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on the screen of a television camera during his visit to the new studio complex Russia Today in June 2013.
Yuri Kochetkov/Reuters
Portugal used radio propaganda in its colonies in the 1960s against local liberation movements. Decades later there are still lessons to be learned for occupying armies from their failed strategies.
Theresienstadt ghetto / Andrew Shiva, Wikimedia Commons
Unrestricted access to information is vital to a vibrant democracy.But if this information is inaccurate, biased or falsified, the fundamental freedom of informed choice is denied.
Ready to serve.
Google search page via shutterstock.com
Media misinformation is hardly new. But social media amplifies it and makes it harder to correct.
In the early stages of his campaign, Donald Trump eagerly made himself available to the press. As president, that’s likely to change.
Joe Skipper/Reuters
How can journalists resist a master media manipulator, reach local communities and sift through fake news and propaganda? Media experts explore the challenges of covering the next administration.
South Africa’s parastatals are in a dire state. Instead of being the mandated sites of development and profitability, they are costing the public purse billions and have been abused.
Protesters decry the decision by the South African Broadcasting Corporation not to air scenes of violent protest.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
There were high hopes that the SABC would become a true public broadcaster after the end of apartheid when it was used ruthlessly as a propaganda machine. But those hopes have since been dashed.
China’s Confucius Institutes given foreigners a chance to learn more about the country. Africa must be careful that its universities’ partnerships with Confucius Institutes don’t create dependency.
Global Scholar at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC and Hopkins P Breazeale Professor, Manship School of Mass Communications, Louisiana State University