Communication from above and below: Media, Protest and Democracy

Since the end of apartheid, there has been a steady rise in community protests in South Africa. Many of these protests – often cumulatively grouped under the rubric of 'service delivery protests' are not only about the delivery of basic services, but equally about the closing down of democratic/institutional space and process when communities try to raise issues related to services and corruption. If protests are a way for the poor and the marginal to let their voices be heard, these protests should be seen as a form of communication from below with the aim of attaining greater social transformation and inclusion for those sections of society who still feel excluded from the democratic public sphere more than two decades after the arrival of formal democracy in South Africa. The coverage of these protests that the mainstream media provides, the way they are framed and the discourses constructed around them, can be considered communication from above. This paper investigates both these perspectives – from above and below – on community protests, through a three-fold methodology: a quantitative content analysis of print media coverage of community protests; qualitative in-depth interviews with journalists; and qualitative interviews with activists who were involved in the protests.