From the 15th of June to the 15th of July, 2020, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) looked at who got the largest voice share in the media coverage. This was on general coverage and not topic specific. Media Mic, a tool by MMA was used to collect this data. The tool collects sources and their races, genders and affiliations from different media and puts them together to determine who is being quoted the most in media coverage. This user-friendly tool is available to the public. Click here to access it.
This short commentary gives a picture of whose voices dominated coverage and also provides some examples of articles the sources were speaking in. All this is to show who has the most power because it is known that the larger the voice share in media coverage, the more the power that individual holds. Find below the top five sources captured by Media Mic for the period 15th June to 15th July;
- Unsurprisingly, President Cyril Ramaphosa, is the main dominating voice in the media. This could be attributed to him being quoted or mentioned the most in all the articles related to Covid-19 in South Africa, a global pandemic that continues to dominate media coverage.
- Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga also featured a lot on the tool. This is also unsurprising as there were many reports on and protests about back to school in the last 30 days. The protests came from different sectors in society such as trade unions, School Governing Bodies, parents and politicians. Many of them were concerned about the safety of learners returning to schools during the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Allan Winde, the premier of Western Cape Province is also amongst the top quoted or mentioned people in the news during the period under analysis. Winde has been at the forefront of the fight of the Covid-19 in the Western Cape, a province that for a long time was leading when it comes to infection and death rates as a result of Covid-19. Furthermore, the premier was also reportedly quarantined after testing positive for Covid-19 which could have also added to his name being mentioned a lot in the media.
- Minister of Health, Zweli Mkhize, is also amongst the most mentioned in the media. This could be attributed to him being the leader in the fight against Covid-19 and who on a daily basis announces the number of tests done, positive cases, recovered number of people and the deaths that are caused by the virus.
- Tito Mboweni,the Minister of Finance, is among the most common voices as one of concerned about the South African economy bout the South African economy if economic activities do not resume. It was reported that he was among a group of people who called for the relaxation for the relaxation of the ban against tobacco and alcohol .
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