Base legal

In this chapter, I have investigated the effects of western-led media in South Sudan using a social survey, while also examining the process of survey research in a country of the global South. Surveys come with advantages in complex environments; they also come with disadvantages. First, surveys deliver information on how entrenched a phenomenon is in the society. Furthermore, during the process of conducting this research project in Juba, it became clear that they also allowed for greater inclusivity. When conducting the interview part of this project, regular people were wary of answering questions in a recorded one-on-one interview, and their voices were hence hardly heard68_{. Questionnaire research healed this problem. Answering} questions with clear, already phrased answers asked by a South Sudanese national was apparently easier than to be interviewed by a Kawaja. The survey hence proved to be a tool to gain access to people who would otherwise not be heard. A problem was drawing a representative sample from the population. I focus on Juba but even there population numbers are unknown; the situation was made worse by the outbreak of violent conflict in December 2013 when an unknown number of people fled either to or from Juba. A minimum sample size of 354 cases was sought, 500 questionnaires were distributed, resulting after data cleaning in a sample of 461 cases. From this, BBC-listeners were excluded when the question explicitly focused on South Sudan media, reducing the sample to 372. While gender, age, and tribal association are relatively close to South Sudanese reality, having been

178 collected by students the majority of respondents are students. This is far away from reproducing Juba’s population. Still, the focus on students in the survey is not as problematic as one might think. No public electricity distribution system exists in South Sudan. Having power in the house – and thus access to media – is a matter of money. Students, on the other hand, can be assumed to come from relatively affluent backgrounds – they could not afford to study otherwise. This is a population which is the most likely to have access to media, thus it is a population which is of interest when assessing media development campaigns. Conducting the survey showed the importance of paying close attention to how a sample is collected. I conducted the survey twice, and this showed how interviewers seeing me had a direct impact on how they collected data and consequently how useful the data were for me. The process of data gathering revealed insights into the importance of the interplay between researcher and environment and into the process of researching as a social activity. Awareness and reflexivity about data gathering are necessary when doing quantitative research. In this sense, quantitative research needs to be ethnographically informed.

I used descriptive statistics and nonparametric tests to investigate what attitudes and beliefs South Sudanese held towards the media, the state, and groups and if these beliefs are connected to a preference for a radio station. Respondents’ stance on media is rather critical. They do not see media in their country as balanced, accurate, and neutral, and they also do not have a great opinion of their journalists. The sample is evenly divided on the question of whether journalists are well-educated. This, however, does not lead to reservations towards media. A majority believes what is broadcast, although a majority also is convinced that the government uses media to influence people. This is contradictory, unless it means that respondents do not care too much about being influenced by the government. That this indeed might be the case is further supported by two other measures. A small majority thinks that the government is right to control the media, and a third of respondents said

179 that government should pay for media, thus opting for state-owned media. A further third wanted a business model and a quarter wanted the UN to pay. For statements on media accuracy, journalist education, believing the media and government’s influence, it does not make a difference which radio station respondents heard. For the statement, if the government needs to control media, significant differences have been found. Listeners of the state-run radio SS-TV / SS-Radio do agree in the majority with the need for government control. This is unsurprising – the audience of SS-TV / SS-Radio can be expected to be supportive of government measures. In addition, however, the clustered bar chart showed that listeners of the UN-run Radio Miraya and the audiences of the smaller South Sudanese stations Liberty, Dream, Capital and City also in the majority agree that the government should control the media.

Media development and internationally-led media have the explicit aim to inform people on current affairs, hold government accountable, and enable the population to participate in governance. It was hence expected that audiences of the UN-run Radio Miraya, the iNGO-run Eyeradio, of Voice of America in South Sudan, and of the church-run Radio Bakhita would show different attitudes than audiences of the state-run SS-TV / SS-Radio and the small South Sudanese radio stations. Testing and visual inspections of graphs, however, told a different story. In the majority, respondents do not believe that the government works in the best interest of all South Sudanese and it does not matter which radio station people listen to. UNMISS does not enjoy a much better reputation among South Sudanese, with respondents close to evenly divided on the statement that UNMISS works in the best interest of all South Sudanese. The most critical listeners are the audience of the BBC World Service. INGOs enjoy a better reputation, as respondents approve of their work but wish for more cooperation with the government. As there are well-published problems between the national government

180 and the international community69_{, this is an interesting result. Finally, a} majority believes that leadership can change peacefully and on demand of the people. Here it made a difference to which radio station people listen to. The audience of Radio Bakhita was the least likely to believe in peaceful change.

The conflict in South Sudan has often been described as an ethnic one with hostile groups fighting against each other, and the Dinka and Nuer as the main adversaries. The survey does not confirm this view. A severe division along ethnic lines cannot be found. A majority of people have contact across tribal lines in everyday life, and a majority does not see this as a big deal. Furthermore, a huge majority has friends with a different tribal association, and a majority does not find it important to live in a segregated neighbourhood. The conclusion here can only be that people live interethnic cooperation despite the ongoing conflict. This underpins the notion that the conflict is not ethnic. Secondly, the data revealed that while a majority of respondents believe that Dinka, Nuer and all tribes can live peacefully together, a statistically significant difference was found. Dinka and Nuer believe in the majority in peaceful coexistence, while members of other tribes do not. Lastly, for what attitudes people held against members of other tribes than their own it does not make a difference to what media they are listening.

In general, from the survey it can be concluded that the effects of international-led media in South Sudan are not as desired. There is no evidence that people that are listening to a specific type of media have a favourable attitude towards government or towards people from other tribes. The promises of media development, to enable people to participate in governance, to strengthen democracy and to contribute to peace, cannot be seen as fulfilled.

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6 – Interviews

It has been estimated that 90% of all social research comes in the one or the other form with interviews (Holstein and Gubrium 1995) and it has been said that we are living in an interview society (Denzin 2001b, p.23). To an extent, all methods employed in this thesis come with an interview element. There were informal chats when doing ethnography and highly structured interviews in the survey part. This chapter examines the effects of media in South Sudan using unstructured interviews. The aim was to gain insights into people’s experience (Silverman 1993, p.91), to achieve an understanding of how the South Sudanese perceive the media in their country, and how this understanding is congruent with the idea of western media. The second line of inquiry was again if media has brought results in the two areas it is supposedly acting upon, namely the state and relations between groups. While it is not possible to establish a causal link from preference for a radio station to an attitude, value or belief, it seems nevertheless reasonable to expect attitudes and values closer to the western thinking after some years of western media’s work in the country. 28 people were interviewed – less than initially was hoped for. Media is supposedly working on the masses, and this provided in theory a wide pool of possible interviewees to choose from. In practice, recruiting people for interviews was harder than expected. Mostly, only members of the local elites and journalists agreed to interviews. This gives rise to a concern about whose voices are heard in interview studies – an important question due to the popularity of the method.

The chapter proceeds as follows. I first provide details on the execution and the strengths and weaknesses of the method. Following this, the results from the interview study concerning the media, the state, and groups are presented. In the interest of readability, information on the interview partner is given after a full quote (>30 words). Otherwise, this information is provided in a footnote. In order to protect people’s identities, only limited information is given. Grammar has been carefully

182 adjusted where necessary. Based on the interviews, I argue that media is differently understood in South Sudan than among the international expats engaged in media development; and the attempts to implement media based on western understanding leads to problems for the newly trained journalists in South Sudan and for the statebuilding project as it weakens the state instead of strengthening it. The interviews show that there is no mutually agreed definition on the media’s role, on what ‘freedom of expression’ precisely means, and how far this freedom can and should go in a country experiencing internal conflict. The conflict is mostly identified as a power struggle, and not as a consequence of the multi-ethnic nature of the country. Ethnicity is seen as playing a role, but not as an initiating factor.