Advertising revenue is generally regarded as the lifeblood of the mass media since it largely contributes to the financial fortunes of both commercial and so-called public media houses. There is a consensus among poli...Advertising revenue is generally regarded as the lifeblood of the mass media since it largely contributes to the financial fortunes of both commercial and so-called public media houses. There is a consensus among political economy scholars that gives advertisers power over media content. It has also been argued that advertisers usually do not associate with ideological enemies. This research therefore sought to find out whether political advertisements especially, during election time, influence media content and whether political advertisers do not associate with media houses they are not ideologically compatible with. During election times, political parties also become big advertisers and newspapers together with broadcasting media compete to get advertisements from political parties so as to boost their financial fortunes. The research focused on the March 29, 2008 Zimbabwe harmonised elections with Network Guardian News a Kwekwe based privately owned community newspaper being used as a case study. This study utilised critical discourse analysis on purposively selected newspaper stories published during the period under study; while in-depth unstructured interviews with editors, reporters from the newspaper and politicians were also conducted to gather information. The findings revealed that in spite of the pro-ZANU-PF Network Guardian News newspaper carrying both MDc and ZANU-PF advertisements, its editorial stance remained hostile to the MDC-T party.展开更多
文摘Advertising revenue is generally regarded as the lifeblood of the mass media since it largely contributes to the financial fortunes of both commercial and so-called public media houses. There is a consensus among political economy scholars that gives advertisers power over media content. It has also been argued that advertisers usually do not associate with ideological enemies. This research therefore sought to find out whether political advertisements especially, during election time, influence media content and whether political advertisers do not associate with media houses they are not ideologically compatible with. During election times, political parties also become big advertisers and newspapers together with broadcasting media compete to get advertisements from political parties so as to boost their financial fortunes. The research focused on the March 29, 2008 Zimbabwe harmonised elections with Network Guardian News a Kwekwe based privately owned community newspaper being used as a case study. This study utilised critical discourse analysis on purposively selected newspaper stories published during the period under study; while in-depth unstructured interviews with editors, reporters from the newspaper and politicians were also conducted to gather information. The findings revealed that in spite of the pro-ZANU-PF Network Guardian News newspaper carrying both MDc and ZANU-PF advertisements, its editorial stance remained hostile to the MDC-T party.
