Public Health Communication and Language Policy at Rhodes University During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Authors: Aiseng, Kealeboga , Mamase, Zikhona
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455466 , vital:75432 , ISBN 9798369306246 , DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3693-0624-6.ch009
- Description: The COVID-19 pandemic offered unprecedented obstacles to public health communication worldwide. Pandemic revealed disparities and significant gaps in access to public health information for those not proficient in English, potentially leading to the exclusion of indigenous language speakers and minority communities from issues of national interest, including vital COVID-19 updates. This chapter examines the case study of Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape, South Africa and explores the institution's language policies and practices during the pandemic. The institution grapples with linguistic diversity, where English is the primary language of teaching and administration. The study explores language, public health communication, and inclusion at Rhodes University. It seeks to find linguistic and cultural contestations during this time by evaluating the university's response to the pandemic through language. The study uses document analysis to understand how Rhodes University's language practices impacted public health communication during the pandemic.
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- Date Issued: 2024
The Economic Freedom Fighters and Politics of Populism: Enhancing Political Participation, or a Threat to Democracy?
- Authors: Aiseng, Kealeboga
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455481 , vital:75433 , ISBN 9798369304778 , DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3693-0477-8.ch02
- Description: This study presents a novel approach to understanding the economic freedom fighters (EFF) role in South African politics. The party has been called populist, fascist, and a threat to South Africa's democracy. This study was conducted through virtual ethnography research on the role of the EFF in South Africa's politics and presents the research findings here to understand if the EFF is merely populist, a threat to democracy, or encouraging citizens' political participation. The study's findings indicate that the EFF uses populist stances to attract supporters and voters to the party. But unlike the views of some commentators and scholars, the study presents different findings regarding the EFF's populist attitudes in the country's democracy. While some see such populist stances as a threat to democracy, the study views it as the party's advantage, among others, to encourage citizen political participation.
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- Date Issued: 2024
Challenges and Opportunities of Preserving African Indigenous Knowledge Using Digital Technologies: The Case of Bogwera
- Authors: Aiseng, Kealeboga
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455424 , vital:75429 , ISBN 9781668470244 , DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-7024-4.ch007
- Description: Most indigenous knowledge systems, practices, and values disappear due to the influence of technology, human migrations, climate change, globalization, death, memory loss, and civilization. Therefore, indigenous knowledge systems will disappear if they are no longer used. This is because many traditional practices and activities within indigenous knowledge systems that have been used are essential coping and living strategies and are now in danger of disappearing. The chapter investigates how social web technologies, social media platforms, and online video tools can digitize, share, and preserve indigenous knowledge for the current generations that need to be more knowledgeable about these systems and future generations. With the example of bogwera, the chapter studies the role that digital technologies can play in protecting and preserving indigenous knowledge systems in the Taung community in North West, South Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Gender and Culture Shock at University: Perspectives of First-Year Male Students From a Public University in South Africa
- Authors: Aiseng, Kealeboga
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/453392 , vital:75250 , ISBN 9781668469613 , DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-6961-3.ch006
- Description: The chapter seeks to embark on a qualitative study with first-year male students from a public university in South Africa to understand their adjustment and adapting to university life due to challenges with gender and sexuality matters that they face. The authors is mostly interested in male students as they are the usual perpetrators of gender and sexuality offences in universities. With this chapter, the author wants to understand the experiences of these students as they transition from one world (their hometowns) to another (university campuses). Of interest in this study is that some of the students at this university come from previously disadvantaged backgrounds: villages, townships, and farmsteads. Some of them have gone through traditional rites of passage such as initiation schools; others come from patriarchal backgrounds and heteronormative backgrounds.
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- Date Issued: 2023
From linguistic determinism to technological determinism
- Authors: Kaschula, Russell H , Mostert, André M
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67062 , vital:29027 , https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-5888-2.ch447
- Description: publisher version , From Introduction: This article seeks to analyse the link between linguistic determinism, the notion that language determines our thought and the way we perceive our reality, as espoused by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and contemporary technological determinism. Arguably this link takes place within a global context where equal access to technology is not yet guaranteed. Ellul (1964) and Lawson’s (2004) observations create an interesting metaphor in terms of the technological beast staring down human society. The overwhelming response if we accept Lawson’s observation is complacency at best or downright naivety at worst regarding the impact of technology on our thinking. Lawson made his observation in the pre-Facebook era and subsequent literature is now much more focused on all aspects of technology within our contemporary milieu. Technology is now totally ubiquitous in the developed world and becoming more so in developing countries, albeit with a much stronger mobile bias for early technology adopters. That technology is rushing ahead of many individuals and institutions is almost an aphorism with many lagging in its wake. This lag as recognised by Brynjolfson and McAfree (2011) has wide social and economic implications for all members of society, in the case of business those that do not keep up go under. A further pertinent question revolves around how individuals who start from low technological literacy levels or do not keep pace with technological developments are impacted. Dlutu (2013) assesses for example the impact of social network sites on the isiXhosa language and culture in both a rural and urban area of South Africa. Furthermore one may then ask how this technological milieu impacts on the general aspects of the day to day lives and thinking of all members of a society. This gives rise to the concept of technological determinism which in its simplest form states ‘that technology has important effects on our lives’ (Adler, 2008, p. 537). This is far too simplistic when the contemporaneous technological developments are assessed. Adler (2008, p. 537) goes further and recognizes ‘that technology itself is socially determined…and social structures co-evolve in a non-deterministic, emergent process…the effects of any given technology depend mainly on how it is implemented which in turn is socially determined’ (Adler, 2008, p. 537). Engaging this socially determined application of technology can be advanced when the relationship with language and language determinism is considered. Moreover, it is the interplay between technology and language that gives rise to the emerging concept of a language singularity which is brought about by a form of technological determinism. This article seeks to explore the possible effects of rapid technological development on human interaction, language and culture in a ‘globalized’ world which has unequal access to literacy and technology. Furthermore, the article explores the link between language, culture, thought and technology and the type of linguistic and technological determinism that we can anticipate.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015