A political discourse analysis of social memory, collective identity and nation-building in the Sunday Mail and the Standard of Zimbabwe between 1999 and 2013
- Authors: Santos, Phillip
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/41753 , vital:25130
- Description: Although much effort has been expended on studying many sites of social memory, little attention has been directed at the media’s work of memory, especially in post-colonial Africa. The media’s work of memory is important because of its social standing as a communicative and cultural institution, and because social memory is imbricated in processes of both collective identity formation and nation-building which partly shape patterns of economic distribution, recognition, and representation in society. It is in this context that this study shows how Zimbabwe’s The Sunday Mail and The Standard newspapers used social memory to construct the country’s national identity between 1999 and 2013 in the context of a socio-economic and political crisis for the country’s poly-racial, and poly-ethno-linguistic communities. The study also explores how these newspapers worked as memory sites through their construction of Zimbabwe’s national identity during the period under study. It achieves these tasks by analysing how these newspapers reported on such issues as Zimbabwe’s colonial history, the country’s narrative of decolonisation, the Gukurahundi narrative, the land reform process, elections and independence celebrations. The study takes a critical realist approach to qualitative research, and uses Fairclough and Fairclough’s (2012) method of political discourse analysis as well as Aristotle’s approach to rhetoric for a close reading of the sampled newspaper articles. It is informed by Nancy Fraser’s Theory of Justice, Chantal Mouffe’s Model of Agonistic Pluralism, and Jurgen Habermas’s Discourse Ethics Theory. The study concludes that these two newspapers actively use social memory to construct versions of national identity for specific socio-political and economic ends. Editorials and opinions from The Sunday Mail, which construct Zimbabwean-ness in nativist terms represent the hegemonic appropriation of social memory to construct a sense of Zimbabwean nationhood. In contrast, The Standard uses social memory to construct Zimbabwean-ness in modernist terms with citizenship as the core organising principle of belonging. The political discourse analysis of The Sunday Mail’s and The Standard’s evocation of social memory shows that the two newspapers reflect the tension between indigenist and universalist imaginaries of belonging in Zimbabwe. But the newspapers’ construction of belonging in Zimbabwe is informed by justice claims as seen from each of their political standpoints. As such, their respective definitions of Zimbabweans’ justice claims in terms of their political standpoints, also propose how those justice claims should be addressed and who stands to benefit from them.
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- Date Issued: 2017
An investigation into the popularity of Latin soap operas among Zambian viewers: a reception study of Lusaka women
- Authors: Mushambatwa, Iñutu
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7702 , vital:21287
- Description: This study explores the way Zambian women make sense of the representations and discourses in the Latin soaps that they watch daily. The study seeks to find out what pleasures and values Zambian women get from these soaps given that the Latin and Zambian cultures are very different. This is in the context of Zambia being a socially conservative patriarchal and Christian nation, where the legal and traditional practices focus on the authority of the man in relationships, particularly in marriages. The lens through which this study is conducted is provided by the media imperialism thesis and its critiques. The study explores the underlying proposition of the thesis that global media are uncritically received by people in the Third World which contributes to global cultural homogenisation. Drawing on ethnographic critiques of this position, my study provides a close examination of actual viewers in actual contexts in order to understand the complex relationships that often exist between global media and local audiences. Using qualitative methods rooted in reception analysis, the study explores the pleasures women get from these soap operas and in particular, the symbolic means that these soaps provide for what has been referred to as ‘symbolic distancing’. Symbolic distancing foregrounds the way local audiences use global media to distance themselves from the cultural confines of their local environments, exposing them to other worldviews and understandings from which they can critique their own lived conditions of existence. In line with this, the study evaluates whether the viewers’ perceptions and values have been changed by the viewing of these Latin soaps.
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- Date Issued: 2017
An investigation of the Sowetan “enough is enough-take back your dignity” campaign to challenge violence against women and children
- Authors: Ndabezitha, Nomthandazo Sibusisiwe Mary-Angel
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4521 , vital:20685
- Description: This investigation of the Sowetan “Enough is Enough - take back your dignity” campaign to challenge sexual violence explores whether the South African daily newspaper’s sustained anti-rape coverage challenges or reinforces the social order. It locates the Sowetan campaign’s response within two troubling contradictions. First, while South Africa is a democracy with arguably the most liberally progressive constitution in the world, the epidemically high rape statistics indicate that South African women and children inhabit an environment in which they are effectively denied the same freedoms and rights as men. The Sowetan anti-rape campaign responds to this paradox. Second, heightened exposure and coverage in the news media of rape incidents do not seem to correlate directly with a decrease in incidents of sexual violence. My observation of these contradictions leads me to question whether the anti-rape campaign can be socially transformative. Informed by the Foucauldian insights that the meaning of things is not inherent but exists in discourse, which has the power to make itself true, this study investigates what discourses are articulated in the representation of masculinities and femininities. In this regard, my investigation is informed by cultural studies and gender studies theories. Recognising rape as an enactment of a particular type of masculinity makes it clear that rapists are not deviant monsters, but are men embodying a discourse of male sexual entitlement legitimated by the social order. As the campaign coverage largely represents rape in historically black locations such as townships and villages, I argue that rape is an enactment of a particular violent masculinity within a particular socio-economically marginalised postcolonial context. Hence I also use postcolonial studies and gender studies to inform my theory. This qualitative research takes the form of a case study which entails a critical discourse analysis of 19 texts purposively sampled in order to identify whether the campaign challenges or reinforces the social order. I argue that rehearsing the narratives of prevalent rape and horror at this epidemic without addressing the social order of gender inequality that enables rape is inadequate. The findings indicate that the campaign has limited socially transformative potential, as, while it sometimes challenges the discourse of female passivity, it does not go so far as to critically engage with masculinities and questioning how violent ones are produced in the social order.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Conversations, turn-taking, and dialogue: an analysis of the political deliberations of Zimbabwean citizens on the @263Chat Twitter handle
- Authors: Ncube, Meli Mthabisi
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4510 , vital:20684
- Description: The micro-blogging site Twitter, and the social networking site Facebook, are playing a key role in facilitating active political expression in the form of demonstrations against high rates of unemployment, poverty, rampant government repression and corruption. Twitter use in Zimbabwe is very vibrant and it even has its own name, ‘Zwitter.’ Zimbabwe has a closed legacy news media which are highly restricted, and most of the major news outlets are controlled by the state. Another limiting factor to any meaningful practice of deliberative democracy through the media and town hall debates is the intolerance of the ruling party ZANU-PF in dealing with dissenting voices. Thus in Zimbabwean politics, it can be argued that the internet has liberated political debates that have been suppressed and digital media is central to political and social deliberation. This study examines whether there are conversations, turn-taking, and dialogues-all features of deliberations- on the @263Chat Twitter platform which is used as a case study. Qualitative content analysis and interviewing were used to collect the data. The preliminary results of the research show that citizen-led engagements, which are facilitated by @263Chat, have brought to the fore the covert potential of social media platforms to drive political participation and deliberation.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Crime and punishment Mzansi style: an exploration of the discursive production of criminality and popular justice in South Africa’s Daily Sun
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Daily Sun (South Africa) , Tabloid newpapers -- South Africa , Crime in mass media , Justice in mass media , Police in mass media , Newpapers -- South Africa , Newpapers -- Objectivity -- South Africa , Women -- Violence against -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Witchcraft -- South Africa -- Press coverage , Police -- South Africa -- Press coverage
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/44419 , vital:25406
- Description: The highly popular South African tabloid the Daily Sun, established post-apartheid in 2002, is known for its sensationalist and controversial reporting of black township life. Read by over five million black working class readers, much of its reporting concerns the crimes experienced by them and their struggles for justice. The extraordinarily high rate of violent crime in township areas for which South Africa became infamous during the 1980s did not decrease as much as hoped after the political transition in 1994 and crime overshadowed the first decades of the new administration, adding to the frustrations generated by the slow pace of social and economic reform. Part of the Daily Sun’s success can be attributed to how, around these linked concerns, it fashions for its readers a particular discursive world, Sunland. It is the phatic relationship that the tabloid maintains between itself and its readers which forms the foundation upon which this textual study rests. In approaching the tabloid’s representations of crime I draw on cultural criminological understandings of crime as culture and the formative relationship in this regard between crime and the media. As a preeminent site of cultural production in contemporary society, the media contribute to the ongoing definition of what constitutes crime, who is criminal and what counts as justice. This constructivist approach is congruent with Foucault’s notions of discourse and the subject, and I argue that the various competing discourses about crime and justice which appear in the paper establish a set of subjectivities with which its readers may identity. The thesis explores the rhetorical and discursive means by which such subject positions are constructed within the ‘grid of intelligibility’ created by the Daily Sun’s reportage, and using the spatial metaphor of the ‘map’ I trace the contours of the Daily Sun’s domain with regard to crime and popular justice. To this end, the approach taken is a qualitative one which draws eclectically on a variety of interpretive methods, including semiotic, narrative and discourse analysis. Using these, I map the relations between People’s Justice, the police, gender relations and witchcraft crimes, four areas chosen from a broad thematic content analysis of the complete set of editions from 2011. I show how these are not discreet but co-constructed areas within the coverage, drawing their meaning mutually from a range of conflictual relationships derived from the conditions of post-apartheid social life.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Hearing the citizens: inequality, access to journalists and the prospects for inclusively mediated spaces of political deliberation in South Africa
- Authors: Oelofsen, Marietjie
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/35030 , vital:24309
- Description: This study examines the extent to which material and social inequality in post-apartheid South Africa affect possibilities for poor citizens to gain access to mainstream spaces of mediated political deliberation. Access is problematized in terms of the possibilities that exist for poor citizens to ‘appear’ in these spaces as emancipated citizens with political agency. The study is motivated by a perception that South Africa’s middle-class and privileged citizens have more access to political deliberation because mainstream journalists pay more attention to their political concerns. Because mediated political deliberation provides a space for articulating the political will of citizens it is important that it reflects the multiple, and diverse range of voices that make up South Africa’s polity. If the experience of socioeconomically marginalised citizens is not registered in the same way as the experience of citizens with economic and political power, the balance of political decision-making continues to be skewed against the interests of the poor. Rather than a media-centric approach, the study centres on perceptions and views of poor citizens about their relationship with mainstream journalists. The study combines information from group interviews with citizens from Hangberg, Cape Town with 410 news reports in 18 mainstream newspapers about Hangberg citizens over a 20-year period. The interviews show that poor citizens feel largely excluded from mediated political deliberation; not because they do not appear in the news but because of how they appear in the news. The news reports confirm that mainstream journalists pay more attention to voices with political and economic power than to the voices of poor citizens. Even in news reports about Hangberg citizens, political leaders and non-governmental experts often talk about the problems in Hangberg more than the citizens of Hangberg themselves talk about these problems. Building on a relatively new scholarly interest in ‘active’ and ‘political’ listening in media studies and democratic theory (Bickford 1996, Dreher 2009, Couldry 2009, Dobson 2014, Wasserman 2013, Garman and Malila 2014), I consider listening as a constitutive element of the way in which journalists engage with poor citizens in mediated deliberative spaces. I ask whether different practices of listening can enable journalists to construct narratives that provide marginalised groups with different possibilities for equal access to, and participation in these spaces?
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- Date Issued: 2017
Lurking or listening? an ethnographic study of online and offline student political participation through the #MustFall protests at Rhodes University
- Authors: Govender, Carissa Jade
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: #Feesmustfall , #Rhodesmustfall , Social media -- Political aspects -- South Africa , Social movements -- South Africa , Political participation -- South Africa , Online social networks -- Political aspects -- South Africa , Student movements -- South Africa , Rhodes University -- Students
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/35123 , vital:24330
- Description: The way media is created and consumed plays an important role in political participation as it provides information, guides thinking and allows citizens to make informed political choices. It can also interrogate the status quo and challenge existing systems or power relations. This thesis discusses the use of social media by Rhodes University students in the context of the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall protests in South Africa. This thesis interrogates the concept of slacktivism, a term used to describe online or digital activism which is considered to be less active and not as effective as physical activism. Furthermore, the thesis acknowledges that even when digital political participation is recognised, the emphasis and value is placed on those who speak and create content. The thesis examines the notion of participation and what counts as active citizenship. In particular, the majority of social media users who merely lurk and never contribute to content creation or online discussions are further investigated. The qualitative methodological approach used for this thesis involved three parts which looked at student activity on Facebook, student engagement offline, and how students made sense of their online and offline involvement. Firstly, a cyberethnographic investigation was done in order to understand the cyber world in which students are present. Thereafter, a participant observation was carried out to immerse myself in the offline spaces that students engaged in politically, to get a better sense of how their online presence influenced or supplemented their offline activity. Finally, individual interviews were carried out with lurkers to determine why they did not participate in traditional ways, both online and offline. The findings suggest that lurkers are in fact doing more than just being passively present. The high levels of attention paid to content posted by others on social media, as well as the way that the content influences their offline lives suggest that the choice to lurk is far more active than assumed. Students are consciously deciding to lurk for a multitude of reasons, one of which is for the opportunity to learn. Social media is a fast developing; increasingly used form of communication and how political communication across social media platforms is framed affects what we consider to be active engagement. By using theories of listening and emotion talk, the thesis provides new ways of understanding lurking by Rhodes University students on social media, which in turn can lead to better listening, better understanding and greater political participation.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Modern celebrity and inspiration in South Africa: an examination of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans
- Authors: Lishivha, Welcome
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Youth in mass media -- South Africa , Youth -- Social conditions -- South Africa , Mail & Guardian , Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5165 , vital:20782
- Description: The postapartheid condition of a majority of young people in South Africa is substantially similar to the apartheid conditions under which their parents lived. This results in a dominant narrative in the media and everyday talk circulating in South African that the youth are a ‘lost generation’ and also that they represent a significant danger and risk for the stability of our democracy. Against this backdrop The Mail and Guardian, one of the South Africa’s most influential newspapers has chosen to celebrate a small number of young people every year as inspirational and extraordinary in their achievements. This investigation into this representation of a significant - although small - group of young South Africans employed content analysis of the 2015 edition of 200 Young South Africans, interviews with profiled individuals across the years, and a focus group of readers. The study aimed to unpack the complexity of constructing certain young people as exemplary given the structural conditions that constrain and prevent a majority from attaining the education and mobility they need to make a difference in their own lives. The study found through the content analysis that the Mail&Guardian is setting up these young people as exemplary citizens whose actions should inspire other young people to similarly ‘make a difference’. Through the interviews the study found that those featured on the list found both that there was significant social capital in being valorised this way, but that this position was also a complex one to negotiate given the structural limitations of poverty and lack of education for those out of whom they had been chosen. The readers in the focus group did find inspiration in reading about their exemplary peers but they too were conscious of how small a group this was in comparison to the majority of young South Africans. In conclusion the study found that the narrative of hope, inspiration and making a difference is an important message in relation to a generalised hopelessness about South African youth but that it runs the risk of ignoring the significant structural constraints that young, poor, undereducated, unskilled young South Africans face.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Producing journalism about climate change for news and agricultural radio: a case study of Malawi's public broadcaster
- Authors: Kapiri, Francis
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Public radio -- Malawi , Climatic changes in mass media , Climatic changes in mass media -- Case studies -- Malawi , Radio in agriculture -- Malawi , Malawi Broadcasting Corporation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/6375 , vital:21100
- Description: This study investigates how radio journalists at the Malawian public broadcaster (MBC) experience the task of producing content that can help their audiences to engage with the local relevance of climate change. This study establishes terms of reference for this research by mapping out international histories of public engagement with the concept of climate change in the domains of science, politics and the media. It describes how contestations around climate change have evolved within these spheres and concludes that such contestation is shaped by relations of power that inform the international economic domain. The study then examines scholarly evaluations of journalism about climate change, concluding that such evaluation is grounded in distinct normative understandings of the social purpose of such journalism. It is argued that research about Malawian journalists’ experience of reporting on climate change should draw on knowledge of the role that norms play within this local environment. With this goal in mind, the study reviews tools for the analysis of the normative foundations of journalism within specific socio-historic contexts. It demonstrates the relevance of these tools for the identification of norms and their influence on journalism about climate change in the Malawian context. The empirical component of the study draws on this framework by means of a case study of the experiences of journalists working at the MBC. It examines how these journalists experience the task of producing content that enables their audiences to engage with the local relevance of climate change. It compares such experience as articulated by journalists working for agricultural and news programming. It is concluded that the participants have access to credible knowledge about climate change and its relevance to the Malawian context. Based on such knowledge, they articulate a shared understanding of climate change and its relevance to the Malawian context. However, the study identifies differences in the way that the two groups make sense of the practice of producing journalism about climate change that is of relevance to their audience. In particular, the agricultural journalists incorporate a more inclusive and diverse set of norms into their conceptualisation of such practice. At the same time, the two groups nevertheless respond similarly when commenting on institutional factors at MBC that constrain or enable them to produce journalism about climate change that is guided by such norms. They place emphasis on the need for MBC to provide opportunities for journalists to have access to training, facilitated by organisations that have expertise in climate change journalism. It is concluded that the participants recognise that, despite the entrenched culture of authoritarianism at MBC, such workshops can contribute fundamentally to the shaping of journalistic practice within this broadcaster.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Safe space online: the construction of intersectional safety in a South African feminist Facebook group
- Authors: Roux, Kayla
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/8044 , vital:21338
- Description: In this thesis I investigate the construction of an intersectional ‘safe space’ in a closed South African feminist community on the social networking site Facebook. Drawing on my own experience as a group member, observations of group dynamics, focus group interviews with administrators, and interviews with past and present members, I discuss the practices and guidelines employed to ensure the safety and intersectionality of the group. This research spans a period of more than two years, and there were a number of developments in the group over this time. It is a relatively large and well-established feminist Facebook group in South Africa which enforces an intersectional approach to social justice, and it is explicitly formulated and closely monitored so that marginalised voices are privileged in group interactions. Despite the best efforts of group moderators, however, interactions between the privileged and the marginalised tend to reproduce existing power inequalities and jeopardise the safety of those the group is meant to serve. Although some interview participants feel that safe space practices such as the call-out system and exclusionary groups and posts serve to fragment the group and cause conflict, these complaints mainly originate from white women who were required to acknowledge their unearned privilege. Their presence in the group and the problem of ‘white derailment’ makes the space feel unsafe for many POC. Ultimately, a splinter group exclusively for POC was formed in order to provide a safer space for feminists of colour to find solidarity and support, discuss issues affecting them, and do the important and necessary work of selfdefinition. I conclude that while these spaces are limited - and absolute safety can never be guaranteed - these exclusive spaces are an integral starting point in the development of a transversal intersectional politics of solidarity between different actors and movements that share the same values.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Subjectivity and social resistance: a theoretical analysis of the Matrix Trilogy
- Authors: Jamal, Ahmad
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Matrix (Motion picture) , Matrix reloaded (Motion picture) , Matrix revolution (Motion picture) Baudrillard, Jean, 1929-2007. Simulacres et Simulation , Science fiction -- Philosophy , Mass media -- Social aspects , Culture in motion pictures , Dystopian films
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7011 , vital:21209
- Description: The Matrix (1999) is a science-fiction film that successfully bridges modern cinematic action sequences with philosophical parables. It recalls the tradition of philosophical elaboration through science-fiction narratives; a tradition that has existed since the time of Plato. This study aims to bridge the divide between philosophy and psychology by using a theoretical analysis to discuss and explore the ideas of social thinkers (featured in the Matrix Trilogy) and critically analyse them alongside established psychological theories. More specifically, this study provides an in-depth and critical exploration of the ways in which the philosophical works of Jean Baudrillard and Karl Marx, and the widely used and recognised psychological perspectives on human development, cognition and learning offered by both Urie Broffenbrenner and Jean Piaget to simultaneously elucidate a model of human subjectivity and development in today's techno- consumerist society with specific attention to critical resistance. This study suggests that with the rise of the internet and modern communication media; sociocultural and political issues that Broffenbrenner conceptualised as existing in the macrosystem, now have a presence in the microsystem, and correspond to Broffenbrenner's requirements as to what constitutes a proximal process. These processes, according to Broffenbrenner, have the most longstanding effects on our development and contribute the most to our personality. This study also argues that the pre-operational stage and the process of symbolisation both of which Piaget identified are important phases in the child's life that see the accrual and development of signs and discourses. These signs and discourses then contribute to the development of our mind's cognitive structures which Piaget called schema. These structures are developed as we grow and help us make sense of the world by processing information and organising our experiences. This would mean that we perceive and interpret our world through ideologically shaped mental structures. These findings stress the importance of ideological influences and their impact on development and hearken more closely towards ideas about the presence and the effects of ideology by thinkers like Plato and Marx, as well as the dystopian futures explored in science-fiction media like the Matrix Trilogy, George Orwell's 1984 (1948) and Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World (1932), and also the options for critical social resistance explored in the narratives and heroic deeds of these books and their characters.
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- Date Issued: 2017
The emergence of youth protest music and arts as alternative media in Zimbabwe: a Gramscian analysis
- Authors: Kabwato, Chris
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Protest songs -- Zimbabwe , Protest poetry -- Zimbabwe , Hip-hop -- Political aspects -- Zimbabwe , Radical theater -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/51228 , vital:26072
- Description: The primary goal of the research is to examine the reasons for the emergence of - hip-hop-based youth protest music and satirical video comedy in Zimbabwe in a context where democratic and media practice has been restricted. The study examines the strategies and platforms that the young urban-based, musicians and cultural activists employ as they contest the meta-narrative of political nationalists who control the public mass media. The study recognises culture as a site of struggle and seeks to tease out the meaning of specific art forms (‘conscious’ hip-hop music and faux-news satire) in this very specific period of Zimbabwe’s history. The study proposes that the rise of these new forms of hip-hop based protest music, poetry and satirical comedy indicate how through the production and circulation of popular culture, ordinary Africans are able to debate pertinent issues that are marginalised by the official media channels. The study thus sees these artists as organic intellectuals who use alternative media to engage with different publics as they seek to counter hegemonic discourses.
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- Date Issued: 2017
‘Beyond Buhari, Jonathan’: an assessment of four Nigerian newspapers’ (The Guardian, Vanguard, Independent and Leadership) editorial coverage of the 2015 Nigerian general elections
- Authors: Eze, Ogemdi Uchenna
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Elections -- Nigeria -- Press coverage , Mass media -- Political aspects -- Nigeria , Guardian (Lagos, Nigeria) , Vanguard (Lagos, Nigeria) , Independent (Lagos, Nigeria) , Leadership (Abuja, Nigeria)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7656 , vital:21282
- Description: The success of Nigeria’s 2015 general elections was unexpected, given the tense political and security climate in which the polls were conducted. It is against this backdrop that this study explores the contribution of four newspapers (The Guardian, Vanguard, Independent and Leadership) and, in particular, their editorials, to the relatively peaceful and mostly credible 2015 general elections in Nigeria. This qualitative study, located with an interpretivist tradition, draws on both in-depth individual interviews with editorial writers, and thematic content analysis of selected editorials to explore three themes: - violence-free polls, rational voting and credible electoral process. These newspaper editorials made moral and ethical appeals urging “supra-national” and patriotic attitudes as well as more detailed process interventions. Drawing from the theories of argumentation, the research suggests that three kinds (forensic, epideictic and deliberative) of arguments were made and three modes of argumentation (logos, pathos and ethos) were used by editorial writers to advance their arguments. This study examines what the editorial writers hoped to achieve and the normative ideals they drew on in the discharge of what they saw as their editorial duties. Drawing on theoretical insights from normative theories of journalism, and particularly social responsibility theory, this research posits that editorial writers hoped to arrest the spate of violence in the Nigerian polity, raise the level of discussion and redirect the attention of politicians in particular to core issues confronting ordinary Nigerians. The study finds a correlation between the editorials written and the normative ideals embodied in the social responsibility theory, which, the study finds, is the most influential normative ideal in the ‘mainstream’ Nigerian news media, at least in print. This study thus argues that in view of the range and frequency of focus on three core themes, and the persuasive power of writing, a case can be made for the editorials of these four major newspapers playing a constructive and positive role and making some contribution to the eventual peaceful and credible outcome of 2015 national elections in Nigeria.
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- Date Issued: 2017
“Evaluating the ‘reality’ of South Africa’s first season of Big Brother among a select group of Rhodes University students”
- Authors: Pillay, Krivani
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7044 , vital:21212
- Description: This study analyses the reasons audiences watched South Africa’s first reality television series, Big Brother, and sets out to determine which discourse of realism attracted audiences to the programme. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the audience reception of South African reality television and to determine why audiences are attracted to this genre. The South African reality television programme, Big Brother, will be used as a case study to determine audience pleasures. This research also involves an examination of the ‘reality’ constructed by television producers and stakeholders. It will also investigate which discourse of realism viewers draw on when explaining the pleasures they obtain from watching Big Brother. What do audiences understand by the concept ‘reality television’? Is there awareness of the fact that the series is highly constructed? This study outlines how the producers represent Big Brother and how they sell the programme as a reality television programme. This study also determines the producers’ preferred meaning and sets out to reveal whether the audiences merely accept the producers’ preferred reading of Big Brother. Audience ratings in the form of TAMS show that Big Brother is popular (Telmar; 2001). Fiske (1987) writes that in order for a television show to be popular, it has to be read and enjoyed by a diverse audience. Popular texts are polysemic in that their meanings can be inflected differently by various social groups watching the programme. This study examines how audiences understand the notion of reality television and if audience pleasures come from the myth that reality television represents reality.
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- Date Issued: 2017