Sean Jacobs is a scholar of international media and politics. He is currently working on a book about mass media, globalization, and liberal democracy in postapartheid South Africa. Jacobs is an editor of Thabo Mbeki's World: The Politics and Ideology of the South African President (Zed Books, 2002) and two other books. He previously worked as a journalist and as a political analyst at the Institute for Democracy in Cape Town, South Africa. Jacobs founded the website Africa Is a Country.
“I grew up in South Africa in the time of apartheid, which was a form
of racial dictatorship bent on censorship, on preventing people from
having information. So I care about information, and about people having
access to it and understanding it and knowing how to use it, because
the regime was intent not just on censorship but also on controlling the
kind of messages people got. At the same time, I’m very mindful of the
power of media and the way people interpret events happening far away,
whether it's South Africa under apartheid or Tahrir Square today.”