ABSTRACT
This chapter considers South Africa’s patterns of media concentration and their relationship to news access by audiences located in regions with very different demographic and socio-economic characteristics. It explores actual access to news delivered in the ‘traditional’ media by two broad socio-economic groups in two regions of South Africa. Quantitative media concentration studies often use revenue generation, and very commonly advertising generation, to assess the market share of individual media in a particular market. An individual is deemed to have access to a newspaper or magazine title, radio or television channel if he or she has been exposed to that title or channel at least once during the period of assessment. Assessment by individual titles and channels uses the individual title or channel as the unit of assessment, irrespective of its ownership. Assessment by media owners considers the overarching ownership of titles and channels as the unit of assessment.
