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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Africa: the Press and Democracy |
Author: | Karikari, Kwame |
Year: | 1993 |
Periodical: | Race and Class |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 3 |
Period: | January-March |
Pages: | 55-66 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | press democracy Literature, Mass Media and the Press Politics and Government |
Abstract: | The situation of the press in Africa is yet another index of the continent's underdevelopment. The familiar political constraints of authoritarian control aside, economic and cultural factors seriously inhibit the growth of the press as an indispensable institution for the development of pluralism in political and public affairs. Rising levels of illiteracy, high production costs and weak advertising revenue explain principally the low circulation and underdevelopment of the independent press. The sordid record of State monopoly over the media has provoked widespread rejection of State participation, particularly as regards the ownership of the press. But a few commentators do not only consider this unavoidable, they even propose retaining some measure of State control. By far the most obvious limitation on the press as effective media for popular involvement in mass communication is the language factor. The continent's multilingual reality is considered a major constraint on effective mass communication, and there is almost no incentive for private commercial interest in developing the African-language press. Notes, ref. |