What meanings a selection of South African legal practitioners make of their role in the emerging digital media ecosystem
- Authors: Robertson, Heather Lillian
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Public sphere -- South Africa , Lawyers -- South Africa , Citizen journalism -- South Africa , User-generated content -- South Africa , Social media -- Authorship , Digital media -- South Africa , Online journalism -- South Africa , Liminality , Journalism, Legal -- South Africa , Gatewatching , New media ecosystem
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/114854 , vital:34042
- Description: This dissertation explores what a sample of South African lawyers understand about the roles they play in digital public spaces, and whether they perceive their contributions as impacting on journalism in general and legal knowledge among the public more broadly. The communications revolution triggered by web 2.0 interactivity has created a new media ecosystem in which mainstream media journalists co-exist with a variety of non-journalist content producers - including professionals like lawyers, who contribute to media content. This study specifically explores current debates about how the media ecosystem is changing in the digital age, including journalistic practices and routines and the role of journalism within a democracy and daily life. Thomas Hanitzsch and Tim Vos’s recent taxonomy of journalistic functions and roles in society is adapted by combining the domains of politics and daily life, to better describe the roles of non-journalists like the eleven digitally active members of the South African legal community in this study. Using qualitative interviews and content analysis research methods, the study suggests lawyers’ practices and routines challenge current theorisation about the new media ecosystem and digital public sphere in particular ways, suggesting that the affective nature of social media interactions between the lawyers and members of the public is more usefully understood via drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonistic public spaces and Axel Bruns and Tim Highfield’s theorisation of ‘public sphericules’ than Jurgen Habermas’s conceptualisation of a rational public sphere. The study found that all of the digitally active lawyers played one or more active roles in contributing news, opinion and debate about legal and social justice matters on different digital public spaces, even though most were reluctant to describe what they do as journalism. The study concludes that this select group of lawyers do complement and enhance the work of journalists covering the legal field in the new media ecosystem in South Africa. It suggests that much more can be done by both journalists and the legal community to deepen co-operation to further enhance public knowledge about the workings of the South African legal system, in relation to legal rights and the rule of law. This dissertation explores what a sample of South African lawyers understand about the roles they play in digital public spaces, and whether they perceive their contributions as impacting on journalism in general and legal knowledge among the public more broadly. The communications revolution triggered by web 2.0 interactivity has created a new media ecosystem in which mainstream media journalists co-exist with a variety of non-journalist content producers - including professionals like lawyers, who contribute to media content. This study specifically explores current debates about how the media ecosystem is changing in the digital age, including journalistic practices and routines and the role of journalism within a democracy and daily life. Thomas Hanitzsch and Tim Vos’s recent taxonomy of journalistic functions and roles in society is adapted by combining the domains of politics and daily life, to better describe the roles of non-journalists like the eleven digitally active members of the South African legal community in this study. Using qualitative interviews and content analysis research methods, the study suggests lawyers’ practices and routines challenge current theorisation about the new media ecosystem and digital public sphere in particular ways, suggesting that the affective nature of social media interactions between the lawyers and members of the public is more usefully understood via drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s concept of agonistic public spaces and Axel Bruns and Tim Highfield’s theorisation of ‘public sphericules’ than Jurgen Habermas’s conceptualisation of a rational public sphere. The study found that all of the digitally active lawyers played one or more active roles in contributing news, opinion and debate about legal and social justice matters on different digital public spaces, even though most were reluctant to describe what they do as journalism. The study concludes that this select group of lawyers do complement and enhance the work of journalists covering the legal field in the new media ecosystem in South Africa. It suggests that much more can be done by both journalists and the legal community to deepen co-operation to further enhance public knowledge about the workings of the South African legal system, in relation to legal rights and the rule of law.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Zooming in: an ethnographic study of visual journalism for smartphones - journalistic roles and routines at South Africa’s largest graphics unit, Graphics24
- Authors: Gouws, Andries Jacobus
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Journalism -- Technological innovations -- South Africa , Smartphones , Visual communication -- Digital techniques , News Web sites -- South Africa , Online journalism -- South Africa , Information visualization , Graphic arts , Graphics24 , Netwerk24
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63154 , vital:28368
- Description: This study examines the changing roles of graphics journalists in the digital era at Graphics24, the largest information graphics newsroom in South Africa, in the context of their work for Netwerk24, an online news site published in Afrikaans with a strong focus on mobile-first news. The study examines the discursive construction of these new journalistic roles in the digital era where even the core conceptualisation of what journalism is, is being re-examined. It considers external factors affecting the discourse of change, drawing on a hierarchy of influences analytical model, as well as norms specific to the creation of information graphics. Data for this study was gathered by using ethnographic immersion and semi-structured interviews. This study specifically looks at graphics journalists working in a mobile-first environment, and how the pressures of producing information graphics for consumption on smartphones affects their roles. Evidence of two widely differing discourses in the Graphics24 and Netwerk24 newsrooms was found. Visual journalists in this study have created a discourse around being distinct “service providers”, rather than mobile-first journalists, who do not see the need for full integration in the fast-paced mobile news environment of Netwerk24. Word-centric journalists have, by contrast, created a mobile-first discourse. They experience the separateness of the graphics team as a barrier that impedes the creation of good information graphics for mobile phone consumption. Although this is a very localised study in a very particular context, this study contributes to broader thinking in what is a very under-researched field: The changing roles of visual journalists in the digital era and the discursive construction of these roles. The study suggests that even in the digital era where the definition of newsrooms has become much more fluid and less fixed physically, ethnographic methods can still offer a meaningful way to explore journalistic roles.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Blogging, journalism and the public sphere: assessing the value of the 'blogosphere' as a new form of the public sphere : a case study of the Mail & Guardian Online's Blogmark
- Authors: Sibanda, Fortune
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Habermas, Jürgen -- Criticism and interpretation , Mail & Guardian , Blogs -- South Africa , Online journalism -- South Africa , Electronic newspapers -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3483 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002938 , Habermas, Jürgen -- Criticism and interpretation , Mail & Guardian , Blogs -- South Africa , Online journalism -- South Africa , Electronic newspapers -- South Africa
- Description: The study seeks to investigate whether weblogs can act as virtual public spheres, where people can meet to discuss issues of interest to them. It uses the Mail & Guardian Online’s Blogmark as a case study. Weblogs – highly interactive online journals comprised of links and postings in reverse chronological order – are fast becoming an avenue of choice for many internet users wanting to share opinions and news with others online. Because of their unique read-and-write characteristics, some have equated them to the 18th century coffeehouses, around which the early forms of citizen involvement in public affairs began in early capitalist Europe. Despite their growing popularity, however, not much scholarly work has been dedicated to the practice of blogging in Africa, and particularly in South Africa. The study’s theoretical framework is drawn from Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the public sphere. While noting some of the criticisms of the Habermasian model, it is argued that the concept is instrumental in our understanding of the relationship between the media and democracy. The study, however, adopted a re-worked model of the concept of the public sphere. This model argues for the need to have a multiplicity of public sphericules (instead of one single public sphere as advocated by Habermas), around which individuals can congregate to discuss issues of common concern to them. Using a combination of qualitative content analysis, self-completion questionnaires and a semi-structured interview, the study found Blogmark to be an example of how emerging internet genres such as weblogs can be vehicles of citizen involvement in public life. A range of issues were discussed in the blog, from politics, race and ii i gender issues, to personal anecdotes, relationships, and sex. However, while some posts exhibited high levels of interactivity, with many bloggers joining in to offer their opinions, some read like online monologues. The study argues that although blogging is a practice that is still limited to a few privileged individuals, with the everrising size of the ‘blogosphere’, weblogs such as Blogmark are making a small but not insignificant contribution to the number of voices that can be heard in the public realm.
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- Date Issued: 2006