An investigation into the discursive contructions of childhood masculinity and femininity in BEN 10
- Authors: Gharbaharan, Leah
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3384 , vital:20477
- Description: This thesis investigates the representation of gendered childhood in popular children’s television series Ben 10. The series focuses on ten year old Ben who is granted alien powers, deciding to use them to protect innocent people from danger. Alongside Ben is his ten year old female cousin, Gwen, presented as his foil and guide throughout the series. As the characters develop the series presents particular gendered ways of performing childhood and adolescence and responses to the challenges of growing up. Before charting the trajectories of masculinity and femininity of the series I provide a theoretical framework drawing on the work of Foucault for his conceptualisation of discourse, discursive regimes and discursive subjects. The discursive approach is further explored by outlining particular concepts posited by Connell and Butler who argue for the discursive construction and performativity of gender. Similarly, I employ a social constructionist approach to childhood, arguing for children as active meaning makers – albeit constrained by broader discourses. They are constantly learning behaviours which shape their social practice, indicating the significance of studies on children’s media. Consistent with a constructivist approach, this study employs a qualitative methodology to undertake a Critical Discourse Analysis of select episodes, also informed by narrative theories. These ideas underpin the textual analysis of each purposively sampled episode of the three series to present the progression of masculinity and femininity from childhood through early and later adolescence through the characters Ben and Gwen. The analysis serves to demonstrate that Rousseau’s gendered notions of childhood still have considerable purchase in the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to the female character. This study’s findings propose a shift in children’s televisual representations to espousing more liberal views of masculinity, wherein boys are permitted space to feel fear and anxiety. Unsurprisingly, the series continues to uphold traditional ideals of heteronormativity and a hegemonic masculinity which uses physicality to demonstrate dominance. Furthermore, despite the modern conception of self-actualising females the series expects its female characters to work doubly hard without fundamentally challenging patriarchal ideals. That conventional, patriarchal gender roles are rehearsed and privileged in this popular series has implications in terms of persistent gender inequalities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Gharbaharan, Leah
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3384 , vital:20477
- Description: This thesis investigates the representation of gendered childhood in popular children’s television series Ben 10. The series focuses on ten year old Ben who is granted alien powers, deciding to use them to protect innocent people from danger. Alongside Ben is his ten year old female cousin, Gwen, presented as his foil and guide throughout the series. As the characters develop the series presents particular gendered ways of performing childhood and adolescence and responses to the challenges of growing up. Before charting the trajectories of masculinity and femininity of the series I provide a theoretical framework drawing on the work of Foucault for his conceptualisation of discourse, discursive regimes and discursive subjects. The discursive approach is further explored by outlining particular concepts posited by Connell and Butler who argue for the discursive construction and performativity of gender. Similarly, I employ a social constructionist approach to childhood, arguing for children as active meaning makers – albeit constrained by broader discourses. They are constantly learning behaviours which shape their social practice, indicating the significance of studies on children’s media. Consistent with a constructivist approach, this study employs a qualitative methodology to undertake a Critical Discourse Analysis of select episodes, also informed by narrative theories. These ideas underpin the textual analysis of each purposively sampled episode of the three series to present the progression of masculinity and femininity from childhood through early and later adolescence through the characters Ben and Gwen. The analysis serves to demonstrate that Rousseau’s gendered notions of childhood still have considerable purchase in the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to the female character. This study’s findings propose a shift in children’s televisual representations to espousing more liberal views of masculinity, wherein boys are permitted space to feel fear and anxiety. Unsurprisingly, the series continues to uphold traditional ideals of heteronormativity and a hegemonic masculinity which uses physicality to demonstrate dominance. Furthermore, despite the modern conception of self-actualising females the series expects its female characters to work doubly hard without fundamentally challenging patriarchal ideals. That conventional, patriarchal gender roles are rehearsed and privileged in this popular series has implications in terms of persistent gender inequalities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Constructing a local approach to journalism education: a study of Zambian educators’ conceptualisation of the ideal journalism curriculum
- Authors: Milupi, Mulako
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3552 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021228
- Description: This research is an investigation of Zambian journalism educators’ conception of the knowledge, competencies and values that should inform their teaching practice. The study establishes how such educators conceptualise of the purpose of journalism education within the Zambian context. As part of this examination, it identifies characteristics of this context that educators regard to be of relevance to their conceptualisation of such purpose. It then identifies what they understand as the implications for the design of the ideal journalism education curriculum. The study assesses the relevance of these perspectives to the teaching of journalism in Zambia, as an example of an African country with a ‘developing’ economy. The study draws for its theoretical framework on journalism studies generally and scholarship about journalism education more specifically. It is argued that a review of the global history of journalism education points to the existence of three main traditions of teaching that have developed internationally. The first of these traditions is described as being dedicated to the project of ‘professionalisation’; the second to the production of ‘critical practitioners’, and the third to the project of ‘social development’. These traditions are based on different understandings with regard to the principles on which journalism education programmes should be based and the kind of knowledge that they should draw on. It is noted that this body of literature does not include extensive research of the way in which particular groups of African journalism educators respond to these traditions. In order to contribute to such research, the empirical component of this study sets out to explore Zambian journalism educators’ conceptualisation of journalism education within their own social context. It does so by means of an exploration of journalism educators based, respectively, at the Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts (EHC) and the University of Zambia (UNZA)’s Mass Communication Department. The foremost conclusion of the research is that both the professionalising and developmental tradition can be observed to influence the participants’ discussion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Milupi, Mulako
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3552 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021228
- Description: This research is an investigation of Zambian journalism educators’ conception of the knowledge, competencies and values that should inform their teaching practice. The study establishes how such educators conceptualise of the purpose of journalism education within the Zambian context. As part of this examination, it identifies characteristics of this context that educators regard to be of relevance to their conceptualisation of such purpose. It then identifies what they understand as the implications for the design of the ideal journalism education curriculum. The study assesses the relevance of these perspectives to the teaching of journalism in Zambia, as an example of an African country with a ‘developing’ economy. The study draws for its theoretical framework on journalism studies generally and scholarship about journalism education more specifically. It is argued that a review of the global history of journalism education points to the existence of three main traditions of teaching that have developed internationally. The first of these traditions is described as being dedicated to the project of ‘professionalisation’; the second to the production of ‘critical practitioners’, and the third to the project of ‘social development’. These traditions are based on different understandings with regard to the principles on which journalism education programmes should be based and the kind of knowledge that they should draw on. It is noted that this body of literature does not include extensive research of the way in which particular groups of African journalism educators respond to these traditions. In order to contribute to such research, the empirical component of this study sets out to explore Zambian journalism educators’ conceptualisation of journalism education within their own social context. It does so by means of an exploration of journalism educators based, respectively, at the Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts (EHC) and the University of Zambia (UNZA)’s Mass Communication Department. The foremost conclusion of the research is that both the professionalising and developmental tradition can be observed to influence the participants’ discussion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Creating evidence-based guidelines for healthy eating educational campaigns aimed at low-income South Africans: a case study of Grahamstown
- Authors: Booth, Christopher
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3336 , vital:20485
- Description: Through a literature review and qualitative research, this study explores what a media-centric nutritional intervention needs to include in order to be effective amongst those whose health is most impacted by poor nutrition – poorer and mostly black South Africans. The study sketches the current nutritional landscape of South Africa, and draws on both Behaviour Change Communication and Media Effect theories to hypothesise how a campaign might be devised to change popular understandings of the relationship between health and nutrition, and inspire some change in food consumption behaviours and choices. The study explores the key factors that drive nutritional behaviours (including the environmental constraint of cost, the peer pressure and socialisation of food, and the desire for knowledge and change) and explores how media-based interventions could be more effective. To do this, this study creates three layers of an idealised and hypothetical “Super 7” fruit and vegetable consumption promotion campaign. From this data, and the insights developed, new guidelines for possible future nutritional education campaigns are suggested and developed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Booth, Christopher
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3336 , vital:20485
- Description: Through a literature review and qualitative research, this study explores what a media-centric nutritional intervention needs to include in order to be effective amongst those whose health is most impacted by poor nutrition – poorer and mostly black South Africans. The study sketches the current nutritional landscape of South Africa, and draws on both Behaviour Change Communication and Media Effect theories to hypothesise how a campaign might be devised to change popular understandings of the relationship between health and nutrition, and inspire some change in food consumption behaviours and choices. The study explores the key factors that drive nutritional behaviours (including the environmental constraint of cost, the peer pressure and socialisation of food, and the desire for knowledge and change) and explores how media-based interventions could be more effective. To do this, this study creates three layers of an idealised and hypothetical “Super 7” fruit and vegetable consumption promotion campaign. From this data, and the insights developed, new guidelines for possible future nutritional education campaigns are suggested and developed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Facebook, youth and political action: a comparative study of Zimbabwe and South Africa
- Authors: Mare, Admire
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3553 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021259
- Description: This comparative multi-sited study examines how, why and when politically engaged youths in distinctive national and social movement contexts use Facebook to facilitate political activism. As part of the research objectives, this study is concerned with investigating how and why youth activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa use the popular corporate social network site for political purposes. The study explores the discursive interactions and micro-politics of participation which plays out on selected Facebook groups and pages. It also examines the extent to which the selected Facebook pages and groups can be considered as alternative spaces for political activism. It also documents and analyses the various kinds of political discourses (described here as digital hidden transcripts) which are circulated by Zimbabwean and South African youth activists on Facebook fan pages and groups. Methodologically, this study adopts a predominantly qualitative research design although it also draws on quantitative data in terms of levels of interaction on Facebook groups and pages. Consequently, this study engages in data triangulation which allows me to make sense of how and why politically engaged youths from a range of six social movements in Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook for political action. In terms of data collection techniques, the study deploys social media ethnography (online participant observation), qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews. Theoretically, this study jettisons the Habermasian theory of public sphere in favour of Fraser’s (1990) concept of the subaltern counter-publics, Scott’s (1985) metaphor of hidden transcripts and some insightful views on popular culture gleaned from African studies. Melding these ideas into a synthesised theoretical frame, this study argues that Facebook fan pages and groups can be conceptualised as parallel discursive arenas where marginalised groups (including politically active youths) have a political life outside the dominant mediated public sphere often in ways that are generally viewed as “irrational” and “non-political” in mainstream Western literature. This study also proposes ways of enriching Fraser’s concept of subaltern counter-publics by incorporating elements from Scott’s metaphor of hidden transcripts in order to analyse the various kinds of political discourses which are circulated on social media. The findings demonstrate that youth activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa are using Facebook to engage in traditional and alternative forms of political participation. Findings show that Facebook in both political contexts is deployed for transmitting and accessing civic and political information, as a conduit for online donations and fundraising, for contacting political decision makers, as a venue of political activism, as an advertising platform for social and political events and as a platform for everyday political talk. It demonstrates that the broader political context shapes and constraints the localised appropriations of Facebook for political purposes in ways that deconstructs some of the postulations of the cyber-optimist and pessimist approaches. The study also found that youth activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa used Facebook in their own unique ways as shaped and dictated by the broader political and mediated opportunity structures. It argues that youth’s engagement with social media platforms for political purposes should be understood in their own terms without necessarily imposing inflexible boundaries on what counts as political participation. Although Facebook like other social media platforms foster avenues for cognitive engagement, discursive participation and political mobilisation, these political practices are not immune to the influences of offline processes. Youth activists in all the six case organisations used Facebook as a complementary and supplementary space for political processes rather than as a standalone platform. The study also argues that compared to South Africa, the political uses of Facebook in Zimbabwe are largely influenced by practices of state surveillance. It also found that whilst youth activists in South Africa are deploying Facebook to supplement traditional methods of political activism, their counterparts in Zimbabwe are using the same technology to circumvent the restricted political and media environment. The findings also indicate that youth activists in both countries are using Facebook as a change agent tool within the broader media ecology which is characterised by the increasing interpenetration of older and newer media platforms. In terms of micro-politics of participation and discursive interactions, this study found that Facebook pages and groups should viewed as a “sites of power” where corporate forces and platform specific code coalesce together fostering “algorithmic” gatekeeping practices and the favouring of paid for content over non-paid for user-generated-content which ultimately affects activists’ visibility and reach within the online media ecology. These gatekeeping practices therefore further complicate claims by cyber-optimists that social media platforms are the sine qua non spaces for symmetrical and democratic participation. This study argues that “subtle forms of control” characterise the much glorified participatory cultures on Facebook in ways that defy optimistic accounts of the role of new media in political change.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Mare, Admire
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3553 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021259
- Description: This comparative multi-sited study examines how, why and when politically engaged youths in distinctive national and social movement contexts use Facebook to facilitate political activism. As part of the research objectives, this study is concerned with investigating how and why youth activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa use the popular corporate social network site for political purposes. The study explores the discursive interactions and micro-politics of participation which plays out on selected Facebook groups and pages. It also examines the extent to which the selected Facebook pages and groups can be considered as alternative spaces for political activism. It also documents and analyses the various kinds of political discourses (described here as digital hidden transcripts) which are circulated by Zimbabwean and South African youth activists on Facebook fan pages and groups. Methodologically, this study adopts a predominantly qualitative research design although it also draws on quantitative data in terms of levels of interaction on Facebook groups and pages. Consequently, this study engages in data triangulation which allows me to make sense of how and why politically engaged youths from a range of six social movements in Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook for political action. In terms of data collection techniques, the study deploys social media ethnography (online participant observation), qualitative content analysis and in-depth interviews. Theoretically, this study jettisons the Habermasian theory of public sphere in favour of Fraser’s (1990) concept of the subaltern counter-publics, Scott’s (1985) metaphor of hidden transcripts and some insightful views on popular culture gleaned from African studies. Melding these ideas into a synthesised theoretical frame, this study argues that Facebook fan pages and groups can be conceptualised as parallel discursive arenas where marginalised groups (including politically active youths) have a political life outside the dominant mediated public sphere often in ways that are generally viewed as “irrational” and “non-political” in mainstream Western literature. This study also proposes ways of enriching Fraser’s concept of subaltern counter-publics by incorporating elements from Scott’s metaphor of hidden transcripts in order to analyse the various kinds of political discourses which are circulated on social media. The findings demonstrate that youth activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa are using Facebook to engage in traditional and alternative forms of political participation. Findings show that Facebook in both political contexts is deployed for transmitting and accessing civic and political information, as a conduit for online donations and fundraising, for contacting political decision makers, as a venue of political activism, as an advertising platform for social and political events and as a platform for everyday political talk. It demonstrates that the broader political context shapes and constraints the localised appropriations of Facebook for political purposes in ways that deconstructs some of the postulations of the cyber-optimist and pessimist approaches. The study also found that youth activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa used Facebook in their own unique ways as shaped and dictated by the broader political and mediated opportunity structures. It argues that youth’s engagement with social media platforms for political purposes should be understood in their own terms without necessarily imposing inflexible boundaries on what counts as political participation. Although Facebook like other social media platforms foster avenues for cognitive engagement, discursive participation and political mobilisation, these political practices are not immune to the influences of offline processes. Youth activists in all the six case organisations used Facebook as a complementary and supplementary space for political processes rather than as a standalone platform. The study also argues that compared to South Africa, the political uses of Facebook in Zimbabwe are largely influenced by practices of state surveillance. It also found that whilst youth activists in South Africa are deploying Facebook to supplement traditional methods of political activism, their counterparts in Zimbabwe are using the same technology to circumvent the restricted political and media environment. The findings also indicate that youth activists in both countries are using Facebook as a change agent tool within the broader media ecology which is characterised by the increasing interpenetration of older and newer media platforms. In terms of micro-politics of participation and discursive interactions, this study found that Facebook pages and groups should viewed as a “sites of power” where corporate forces and platform specific code coalesce together fostering “algorithmic” gatekeeping practices and the favouring of paid for content over non-paid for user-generated-content which ultimately affects activists’ visibility and reach within the online media ecology. These gatekeeping practices therefore further complicate claims by cyber-optimists that social media platforms are the sine qua non spaces for symmetrical and democratic participation. This study argues that “subtle forms of control” characterise the much glorified participatory cultures on Facebook in ways that defy optimistic accounts of the role of new media in political change.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
How do editors' attitudes and their perceptions of readers' interests combine with other factors to influence the publication of articles on the natural sciences in the Daily Dispatch?
- Authors: Lang, Steven
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3893 , vital:20553
- Description: This half-thesis examines how editorial values and perceptions determine the quantity and nature of science articles published in the Daily Dispatch, a newspaper distributed through large parts of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. It was predicated on the notion that South African media in general does not cover the natural sciences adequately. In order to test this assumption I decided to investigate the production and publication of science content at the Daily Dispatch as a test case. This study‘s theoretical framework draws on the normative roles of the media in a democracy developed by Christians et al. (2009) and the models of science journalism described by Secko et al. (2012) to demonstrate how two parallel conceptions of democracy set diverse journalistic objectives and engender different types of science content. Having applied an essentially political framework, this thesis uses the Hierarchy of Influences Model devised by Reese and Shoemaker‘s (2014) to explore how an array of forces acting inside and outside the news organisation can shape the publication of science articles. A quantitative content analysis is used to ascertain the number of science articles published in the first six months of 2014. It investigates which science fields received the most coverage, and how prominently the articles are positioned. As the Daily Dispatch does not have any staff dedicated to the science beat, the analysis finds out who produces the science articles that are published. The second phase of this research is a series of interviews with senior editorial staff members aimed at probing the editorial thought processes that determine when and whether specific science stories should be covered. The personal views and biases of the editorial leadership are pivotal to this research because although the newspaper commissioned surveys to determine readership preferences, there were no questions about the sciences. Senior reporters were adamant that they worked for a political newspaper and that as a significant proportion of their readership lived in socio-economically deprived circumstances, they were bound to give priority to articles aimed at improving the lot of their readers. The third phase is a qualitative content analysis of selected articles designed to reveal how science articles are constructed. The final element of this thesis, which ultimately provides an answer to the research question, draws together conclusions from the previous phases to demonstrate the linkage between editorial values and the production of science content.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Lang, Steven
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3893 , vital:20553
- Description: This half-thesis examines how editorial values and perceptions determine the quantity and nature of science articles published in the Daily Dispatch, a newspaper distributed through large parts of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. It was predicated on the notion that South African media in general does not cover the natural sciences adequately. In order to test this assumption I decided to investigate the production and publication of science content at the Daily Dispatch as a test case. This study‘s theoretical framework draws on the normative roles of the media in a democracy developed by Christians et al. (2009) and the models of science journalism described by Secko et al. (2012) to demonstrate how two parallel conceptions of democracy set diverse journalistic objectives and engender different types of science content. Having applied an essentially political framework, this thesis uses the Hierarchy of Influences Model devised by Reese and Shoemaker‘s (2014) to explore how an array of forces acting inside and outside the news organisation can shape the publication of science articles. A quantitative content analysis is used to ascertain the number of science articles published in the first six months of 2014. It investigates which science fields received the most coverage, and how prominently the articles are positioned. As the Daily Dispatch does not have any staff dedicated to the science beat, the analysis finds out who produces the science articles that are published. The second phase of this research is a series of interviews with senior editorial staff members aimed at probing the editorial thought processes that determine when and whether specific science stories should be covered. The personal views and biases of the editorial leadership are pivotal to this research because although the newspaper commissioned surveys to determine readership preferences, there were no questions about the sciences. Senior reporters were adamant that they worked for a political newspaper and that as a significant proportion of their readership lived in socio-economically deprived circumstances, they were bound to give priority to articles aimed at improving the lot of their readers. The third phase is a qualitative content analysis of selected articles designed to reveal how science articles are constructed. The final element of this thesis, which ultimately provides an answer to the research question, draws together conclusions from the previous phases to demonstrate the linkage between editorial values and the production of science content.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
The gendered appropriation of the mobile phone for online health information by youths in Zimbabwean tertiary learning institutions
- Authors: Tsarwe, Stanley Zvinaiye
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/738 , vital:19986
- Description: The study uses domestication of technology and Cultural Studies theories to investigate how youth in three institutions of tertiary learning in Harare, Zimbabwe are accessing health-related information online using their smart phones. The study critically examines how youths deploy these digital media technologies to construct their identities in a context where social and political power is unevenly distributed. To understand these issues, the study uses a triangulated research design comprising a social survey, in-depth individual interviews and field observation for data collection. Results from this data gathering showed that the use of digital media technologies differ across gender, at least in terms of the distribution of online health seeking practices between male and female youths. According to the survey results, more women tend to use their mobile phones to access health-related information. Data from the individual in-depth interviews showed that the most significant site of social change (social disruption) relates to how digital media facilitates emerging new identities (i.e. identity in the broader sense as well as health-related and sexual health identities). For both young men and young women, mobile phones are used precisely for image management, peer acceptance and the desire to define respective feminities and masculinities within their social networks. Both male and female youths assert they are able to access a variety of information online, and some of this information would not easily accessible when sought from traditional structures such as their parents. This way, youth feel that digital media technologies allow them to cultivate their own preferred identities outside the purview of parental authority and social control. Drawing on postmodern literature, such emerging identities are predicated on cultural volatility, unpredictability, decentralisation and refusal to fixation and conformity to socially constructed identities about being a youth, or being a young Zimbabwean woman or man, for example. Thus, the use of mobile phones and mobile Internet by youths in Zimbabwe to access health-related information has sociopolitical significance, because it allows young people to fashion preferred identities that resists entrenched regimes of social power. For young people in Zimbabwe, online health seeking practices precisely reflects attempt towards negotiating with and circumvent the structural limitations of either an expensive health care system or the general curiosity associated with growing up. That way, it is arguable that youth use digital media technologies to help them exercise some level of social autonomy and agency in dealing with everyday life. Individual in-depth interviews demonstrated that mobile phones and mobile Internet can thus be seen as opening up more spaces for youth to learn more about issues about growing up, sexuality and adolescents that a conservative society such as Zimbabwe traditionally consider as ‘inappropriate’ for youth consumption. They argued that the inability of parents to discuss with them issues about growing up often result in them “finding out on our own” using digital media technologies to satisfy the desire to wean themselves from what they view as arbitrary and asymmetrical social power. The study demonstrated that youth use the mobile phone to challenge the social world of adults and to show resistance to it, thereby strengthening a subculture as well as constructing an identity. However, despite the positive attributes of social capital, connectivity and personalised experience afforded by the mobile phone, the mobile phone is sometimes a source of conflict in relationships between young men and women; that is, between unmarried partners. Young women reported that their boyfriends often force them to disclose who they communicate with using their mobile phones. They also reported that their boyfriends often did some random surveillance of their social media contacts and activities. Thus, whilst one of the mobile phone’s most powerful attribute is its ability to offer personalised experience, as well as offer synchronised and unlimited access to distant connections, results from in-depth interviews showed that some unwritten expectations and norms dictated that young men closely watch their ‘girlfriends’ social media activities, including their online search activities. As a result, privacy as well as the much touted relationship between mobile phone and women’s autonomy becomes contested arenas. Even at young ages, and before marriage, women are socialised to show subservience to their partners by allowing them access to their mobile phones.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Tsarwe, Stanley Zvinaiye
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/738 , vital:19986
- Description: The study uses domestication of technology and Cultural Studies theories to investigate how youth in three institutions of tertiary learning in Harare, Zimbabwe are accessing health-related information online using their smart phones. The study critically examines how youths deploy these digital media technologies to construct their identities in a context where social and political power is unevenly distributed. To understand these issues, the study uses a triangulated research design comprising a social survey, in-depth individual interviews and field observation for data collection. Results from this data gathering showed that the use of digital media technologies differ across gender, at least in terms of the distribution of online health seeking practices between male and female youths. According to the survey results, more women tend to use their mobile phones to access health-related information. Data from the individual in-depth interviews showed that the most significant site of social change (social disruption) relates to how digital media facilitates emerging new identities (i.e. identity in the broader sense as well as health-related and sexual health identities). For both young men and young women, mobile phones are used precisely for image management, peer acceptance and the desire to define respective feminities and masculinities within their social networks. Both male and female youths assert they are able to access a variety of information online, and some of this information would not easily accessible when sought from traditional structures such as their parents. This way, youth feel that digital media technologies allow them to cultivate their own preferred identities outside the purview of parental authority and social control. Drawing on postmodern literature, such emerging identities are predicated on cultural volatility, unpredictability, decentralisation and refusal to fixation and conformity to socially constructed identities about being a youth, or being a young Zimbabwean woman or man, for example. Thus, the use of mobile phones and mobile Internet by youths in Zimbabwe to access health-related information has sociopolitical significance, because it allows young people to fashion preferred identities that resists entrenched regimes of social power. For young people in Zimbabwe, online health seeking practices precisely reflects attempt towards negotiating with and circumvent the structural limitations of either an expensive health care system or the general curiosity associated with growing up. That way, it is arguable that youth use digital media technologies to help them exercise some level of social autonomy and agency in dealing with everyday life. Individual in-depth interviews demonstrated that mobile phones and mobile Internet can thus be seen as opening up more spaces for youth to learn more about issues about growing up, sexuality and adolescents that a conservative society such as Zimbabwe traditionally consider as ‘inappropriate’ for youth consumption. They argued that the inability of parents to discuss with them issues about growing up often result in them “finding out on our own” using digital media technologies to satisfy the desire to wean themselves from what they view as arbitrary and asymmetrical social power. The study demonstrated that youth use the mobile phone to challenge the social world of adults and to show resistance to it, thereby strengthening a subculture as well as constructing an identity. However, despite the positive attributes of social capital, connectivity and personalised experience afforded by the mobile phone, the mobile phone is sometimes a source of conflict in relationships between young men and women; that is, between unmarried partners. Young women reported that their boyfriends often force them to disclose who they communicate with using their mobile phones. They also reported that their boyfriends often did some random surveillance of their social media contacts and activities. Thus, whilst one of the mobile phone’s most powerful attribute is its ability to offer personalised experience, as well as offer synchronised and unlimited access to distant connections, results from in-depth interviews showed that some unwritten expectations and norms dictated that young men closely watch their ‘girlfriends’ social media activities, including their online search activities. As a result, privacy as well as the much touted relationship between mobile phone and women’s autonomy becomes contested arenas. Even at young ages, and before marriage, women are socialised to show subservience to their partners by allowing them access to their mobile phones.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
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