Editorial (Editorial‪)‬

What is the 'stuff' of media? Entertainment, information, education? Putting aside educational matters and pure entertainment (the doings of pop stars, lifestyle makeovers and gossip), the 'serious' media (newspapers, television news bulletins, documentarie and current affairs programming) survive on a diet largely made up of sport, crime, economic information and politics. Sometimes these are so entwined that it is difficult to differentiate them from one another. It seems impossible to contemplate 'media' without 'politics'. Likewise, it is now a truism to note that politics is played out in the media just as much as in parliament or in the civil service. In short, politics are now highly 'mediated'. Notes Katheleen Jamieson (1996, 8): 'Whereas in the 19th century many experienced politics in the form of stump speeches and parades with brass bands, today's politics is more likely to be experienced in the privacy of our living rooms'. Alexander Johnston in this volume points out that in South Africa there is a ripe coming together of circumstances: liberal democracy, consumer-orientated media and a corporate class that is open to exploiting the global economy (cf. e.g., Tomaselli and Dunn 2005). In these circumstances, mediated politics is an inevitability. This integral relationship between media and politics has been taken for granted by South African media academics. It is an obvious background to so much else they investigate, but which seldom has been the focused subject matter of their research efforts. The inspiration of this volume was conceived originally as a celebration of ten years of democracy in South Africa. It was envisaged that the volume would include studies of various electoral campaigns between that time and the present. The vagaries of academic publishing, the unpredictability of submissions and the caprices of refereeing all conspired together to push the project's timeline way beyond April 2004 into late 2005. Nevertheless, this appears fitting: what would a volume on political communications be without protracted negotiation, a great deal of change of heart and some good old conspiracies, even if they are proved to be unintended and illusory. The glut of national self-congratulation that marked our first democratic decade came and went, and we South Africans were left with the task of quieter contemplation an opportunity for a more measured reflection of what it is we mean by political communication, and an examination of a few instances in which the processes of political life have been communicated to the public.