ABSTRACT
Proponents of the new and defenders of the old revolution encounter fellow students and general citizens, particularly the youth, who possess too little by way of social capital and political knowledge, regarding contemporary events in their own country, let alone in the global public sphere. Newspaper readership and circulation in South Africa (SA), mainly among the youth, is in severe decline. This is a problem because print, unlike radio and TV, is critically implicated in both political knowledge and action. The channel's rate of decline is across age categories. It could be that youth decline is pulling down all other age groups, or that youth, as expressed above, exist in an environment where news consumption is generally in decline. E.tv is a privately owned commercial broadcaster that provides a variety of mainly entertainment programmes. Unlike the multi-channel South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), e.tv, until recently, comprised a single channel.
