Citizens of the nation, citizens of the world? : a comparative content analysis of globalisation in SABC 3 and e-TV national television news.

Abstract

South Africa is a country interconnected with Africa and also more connected with the world.South African national television news evidently is also more global or 'glocalised' (Robertson, 1996) today in comparison to the period during apartheid. This research incorporates an analytic-empirical, social constructivist approach, and interprets news as a specific construction of reality, a "social artifact" (Hjarvard, 2002: 91) of the context in which it is produced (Venter, 2001: 197). This definition allows for the analysis of existing aspects in news items to determine exactly what makes news reality global, 'glocal' or cosmopolitan.The methodology uses a comparative content analysis of three non-sequential weeks selected during September, October, and November 2006, of SABC 3 and e-TV national television news, focusing only on the first fifteen minutes of bulletins, and examining only foreign news. Foreign news includes foreign news locally and news with a South African connection abroad (Sreberny-Mohammadi etal, 1985). The current research analyses the influence of globalisation on each broadcaster - economically, politically, culturally, and technologically - and examines the mediation of global, 'glocal', and moderate cosmopolitan perspectives in news items. Findings reveal that globalisation does influence SABC 3 and e-TV in similar ways with slight differences, and while national or international perspectives are more prominent, global, 'glocal', and moderate cosmopolitan outlooks are still present, and e-TV represents these slightly more than SABC 3. Conclusively, SABC 3 and e-TV construct its news audience as citizens of the nation and citizens of the world, by representing a 'sliding scale' (Wallis and Baran, 1990) from national to international and global perspectives. This present study demonstrates how SABC 3 and e-TV mediate "allegiances to the outer circle" (Bowden, 2003: 242-243) - regional, international, and global - by examining the relevance of extending beyond a South African perspective in news broadcasts.