Moral panic and porn in South Africa: a critical discourse analysis of top TV's application to broadcast adult-content channels

Abstract

On the 14th March 2013 the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) held a hearing to consider an application by Top TV and their parent company ODM to broadcast three adult-content channels. This application and hearing have again brought the debate surrounding pornography to the fore in South Africa. While research in the field of pornography studies has historically been centred around whether pornography is harmful to women specifically and society in general, the current research aims to move away from this framework and examine issues of subjectivity, discourse, and power within the debate. This will be achieved through the use of moral panic theory, and Foucauldian critical discourse analysis (FCDA) to analyse the transcript of the hearing held at ICASA as well as newspaper reports regarding the hearing and its outcome