Rethinking Comparative Media System Theory From Ghana: Toward a Patronage-Based Hybrid Model

Abstract

This study examines Ghana’s media system through a decolonial lens, using Hallin and Mancini’s comparative framework not as a universal template, but as a point of departure. It explores Ghana’s media in four dimensions: the structure of the media market, political parallelism, journalistic professionalization, and the role of the state. The analysis shows that Ghana operates as a patronage-based hybrid system in which media-politics relations are structured by personalized networks and economic dependencies rather than ideological alignments. Drawing on decolonial scholarship, the article proposes the patronage-based hybrid model as a new analytical category and argues that theorizing African media systems adequately requires centering African epistemologies and historical experience rather than measuring them against Western ideal types.