Authors: Bernadine Jones & Adrian Hadland
When Hallin and Mancini introduced their influential “three models theory” in 2004, South Africa was a young democracy, just a decade old. Even then, the experiences of emerging democracies in the Global South posed critical challenges to their understanding of media and politics. Two decades later, South Africa has undergone significant transformation: increasing diversity in media ownership, the rapid rise of community and social media, digital disruption, and serious challenges to media freedom.
How does Hallin and Mancini’s theory hold up in this evolving context? This article reviews scholarly critiques of the three models theory, including the follow-up work Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (2012), assessing whether the original framework still effectively captures the relationship between media and politics in the Global South.
The article further evaluates Hadland’s (2012) “Africanisation” of the model, considering South Africa’s complex postcolonial realities. It also incorporates Hallin et al.’s (2021) expanded hybridisation model, suggesting that these updated approaches offer a more nuanced understanding of how media and political systems intertwine in postcolonial settings like South Africa. By exploring these adaptations, the article highlights the evolving dynamics of media and politics in an increasingly complex and diverse global landscape.