As we move into May, seasonal changes have the ability to stir something inward, where a simple scroll through the news can awaken unexpected feelings — the anxiety of missing something important, or worse, a subtle realisation that joy has been edited out of view. These experiences speak to something deeper, an emotional atmosphere that is shaped by what we see and what we are never shown.
April 2025 brought with it an extraordinary convergence of spiritual moments and overlapping sacred observances across many traditions and religions. These observances, though diverse, offered invitations to pause and to look more carefully at the world around us.
Among them, the passing of the late Pope Francis. With extensive global media attention, the outpour was palpable and the display of collective reverence revealed the international community’s capacity for unity. At the same time, the degree of visibility raised other considerations around the limitations of access and recognition afforded to leaders from spiritual traditions with smaller global followings.
In recent years, many powerful figures have passed away with comparatively little acknowledgment. These include, among others and by no means limited to Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Imam Dr Idris Abdul’aziz Dutsen Tanshi and many more.
Though the disparity in media coverage may be obvious, it reflects persistent patterns in global storytelling worth looking at, where visibility often aligns with Western influence or economic power.
Left unexamined, such imbalances become self-perpetuating. Breaking this cycle, whether in pursuit of fairness or simply for a fuller understanding of the world, begins with awareness.
Awareness creates space for refining one’s discernment to navigate the waters of repeated exposure to limited narratives, which has been believed to unconsciously shape perception. From there, it becomes a personal reflection, whether to observe more attentively, to notice what is present and what is missing, and to choose how one curates information that reflects a broader human experience — or not.
The choice to recognise for example, diverse spiritual contributions and Indigenous knowledge systems, becomes part of a subtle cultural shift that values inclusion and empowers an informed sense of awareness.
The idea that media shapes perception is not new. Early theorists in the 1920s once proposed the “hypodermic needle” model — the belief that media could inject messages directly into passive minds, much like medicine into the bloodstream. But this failed to consider intersectionality and the complexity of human interpretation. If anything, the information ecosystem has grown more fragmented, emotionally charged and algorithmically engineered, requiring a deeper kind of awareness than ever before.
According to Unesco’s 2022 World Trends in Freedom of Expression report, 85% of the world’s population experienced a decline in press freedom over the previous five years. The erosion of reliable, diverse media environments places greater responsibility on individuals to critically curate what they consume. (The 2025 edition is forthcoming.)
This doesn’t mean abandoning familiar sources altogether. Instead, an awareness of your own personal media ecosystem can invite reflection on the dilemma. A biome of media content exists on a smartphones, within a household, inside waiting rooms, across institutions or in national broadcasting spaces. They are systems that evolve through flows of people, cycles of selection and unpredictable interactions where a change in one part can shift the whole.
In that sense, the act of curation is an act of playing “God” in the natural evolution of your own media ecosystem. This porous boundary between personal media habits and global narratives means each act of curation holds power.
The choice to recognise for example, diverse spiritual contributions and Indigenous knowledge systems, becomes part of a subtle cultural shift that values inclusion and empowers an informed sense of awareness. And, in a disorientating global moment, that kind of awareness may be one of the most radical acts of all.
Conscious curation, when multiplied across individuals, creates culture and builds a social endowment that can be measured as confidence and worth. It shapes how we see the world, how we see ourselves and by extension, how a country presents its own identity and cultural capital on the global stage.
As South Africa prepares to host the G20 Summit in November, such cultural self-awareness becomes strategic. Heads of state arrive as stewards of national culture.
What a country exudes through creativity is a form of soft power, signifying confidence — the silent body language of national coherence and unity. Unity begins with how people value their own stories and knowledge systems.
While technologies such as artificial intelligence can carry built-in biases, it is our own habits and choices that often reinforce global patterns of visibility, value and power.
This may be especially relevant for young people, whose media ecosystems serve as social spaces, learning tools, entertainment and news sources. Many people spend a great deal of time on their phones and perhaps that is inevitable, and increasingly so. Rather than focusing on screen-time, the more important question is how much we are investing in developing the awareness needed to make thoughtful, long-term choices about what we consume.
If young people are empowered to curate their media ecosystems with intention, they may also be more inclined to step beyond them — spending time outdoors or taking dance classes. This extends to an engagement with Indigenous knowledge systems that encourage connection with the environment through self-reflection and cultural rootedness.
Curated with care, media content becomes a tool for cultural fluency and intellectual independence. It contributes to confidence, from the individual to the national.
Philosopher Sophie Oluwole reminded us that African knowledge systems and oral traditions are serious, relevant tools for understanding the world. For young people navigating a fast-paced media environment, these tools can be strategic. They offer clarity in complexity and can build dignity in self-understanding.
Yet there is another imbalance that continues to echo through media structures, the systemic exclusion of women’s wisdom.
For millennia, women’s contributions to science, art, governance, philosophy and diplomacy have been sidelined, censored or erased in varying degrees. This exclusion is historical and structural and has shaped the very institutions that claim to liberate us, while depriving everyone of essential perspective.
Women make up about 49.6% of the global population. In South Africa it is over 51%. And yet, throughout history, half the human story has been sidelined. Reclaiming women’s voices and Indigenous frameworks changes what knowledge looks like, what value sounds like and how futures are imagined.
The work of spiritual leaders and philosophers such as Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa and Oluwole invites us to rethink what counts as legitimate knowledge in a media-saturated world. If these traditions were given the same visibility as mainstream content, how might that reshape the way young people relate to their own heritage, intellect and creative agency? Could we design algorithms to uplift these frameworks because of the value they offer for national identity and the economy?
The atmosphere of the mind is architecture and like all architecture, it can be redesigned with new materials, new intentions and in a new direction. It begins, in part, with the media ecosystem we select, what we question and how we choose to value ourselves.
Whatever the implications may be for the evolution of mass media, when translated into any language, we all stand to benefit from the search for more answers.
What can be said with certainty, however, is that if we build the capacity to curate our media consumption to include the voices and experiences of those often left out of the news, we may also strengthen our ability to live in harmony with those who appear on our screens each day.
• McDonald is a cultural and creative strategist, working across the intersections of media and future-focused transformation
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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