Communicative freedom in a digital democracy: political and economic resistance to freedom of speech and the rise of digital activism in South Africa
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation explores political and economic resistance to communicative freedom in South Africa. Through a mixed methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics analysis, this dissertation seeks to explore how our understanding of democracy is being transformed as we move from a physical, industrialised world into a digital, networked society. South Africa is trying to keep pace with technological advances while still clinging to archaic forms of governance. This project considers whether these archaic forms of governance and older forms of communication legislation are effective in governing communicative freedom in South Africa's emerging network society. I argue that the Protection of State Information Bill (2010), Protection of Personal Information Bill (2009) and the Promotion of Access to Information Act (2013) are ineffective for two reasons. Firstly, the legislation's language is so open-ended that it can be abused by political and economic elites to stifle free speech and transparency. Secondly, the legislation can be used to punish whistleblowers and digital activists who are vested in sustaining a digital commons in the interest of openness and transparency in a functional democracy. In fact, digital activists say that they experience political and economic intimidation that forces them to self-censor under the threat of heavy-handed sanctions. The problem of corporate monopolisation contributes to this problem because the costs of meaningful online access and participation are prohibitively expensive. Effectively, this undermines constitutionally enshrined communicative freedoms. I also explore historical and theoretical approaches to democracy and consider what democracy is in a developing network society. This leads to a discussion of the ways in which vague language choices within laws are used to subvert and undermine the right to communicative freedom. I then engage the work of the civil society organisation, the Right2Know C…
abstract: This dissertation explores political and economic resistance to communicative freedom in South Africa. Through a mixed methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics analysis, this dissertation seeks to explore how our understanding of democracy is being transformed as we move from a physical, industrialised world into a digital, networked society. South Africa is trying to keep pace with technological advances while still clinging to archaic forms of governance. This project considers whether these archaic forms of governance and older forms of communication legislation are effective in governing communicative freedom in South Africa's emerging network society. I argue that the Protection of State Information Bill (2010), Protection of Personal Information Bill (2009) and the Promotion of Access to Information Act (2013) are ineffective for two reasons. Firstly, the legislation's language is so open-ended that it can be abused by political and economic elites to stifle free speech and transparency. Secondly, the legislation can be used to punish whistleblowers and digital activists who are vested in sustaining a digital commons in the interest of openness and transparency in a functional democracy. In fact, digital activists say that they experience political and economic intimidation that forces them to self-censor under the threat of heavy-handed sanctions. The problem of corporate monopolisation contributes to this problem because the costs of meaningful online access and participation are prohibitively expensive. Effectively, this undermines constitutionally enshrined communicative freedoms. I also explore historical and theoretical approaches to democracy and consider what democracy is in a developing network society. This leads to a discussion of the ways in which vague language choices within laws are used to subvert and undermine the right to communicative freedom. I then engage the work of the civil society organisation, the Right2Know C…
author: Brevis, Chad
keywords: Film and Media Studies
date published: 2022
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:22:57Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Centre for Film and Media Studies

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/36576