Will there be a morning after?The colonial history of the media in New Caledonia

Abstract The struggle over public discourse has been a constant of the colonial history of New Caledonia. It attests to the importance of controlling discourse to the maintenance of colonial relations of power and, conversely, to the centrality of this discursive struggle to the decolonisation process. This paper discusses the manner in which the local media in New Caledonia came to be expressive of the political and economic structures of the colony. It also considers the factors behind the emergence of a pro‐independence media. Finally, it explores the possibility of a genuine decolonisation of the mainstream media in a context where struggles over the control of public discourse are once again directly related to struggles over the political future of this French territory.