Tanja Bosch

Using online social networking for teaching and learning: Facebook use at the University of Cape Town

Abstract Web-based learning has made learning content much more freely and instantaneously available to students who can download course notes and readings with a single mouse click. Facebook is one of many Web 2.0 tools – wikis, delicious, YouTube, podcasts – that are listed as having potential applications for teaching and learning. Moreover, it has been argued that the current generation of youth, often described as Net Geners or Digital Natives, may be resistant to traditional methods of teaching and learning. This article explores student use of Facebook at the University of Cape Town, as well as lecturer engagement with students via the new social media. Drawing on a virtual ethnography and qualitative interviews, this article shows that while there are potential positive benefits to using Facebook in teaching and learning, particularly for the development of educational micro-communities, certain challenges, including ICT literacy and uneven access, remain pertinent.

Twitter activism and youth in South Africa: the case of #RhodesMustFall

ABSTRACT This article uses the South African student-led campaign known as Rhodes Must Fall, commonly referred to simply as #RMF, to explore youth activism and counter-memory via social networking site Twitter. The RMF campaign took place at the University of Cape Town and comprised student-led protests, which campaigned to remove the statue of British colonialist Cecil John Rhodes, as activists argued that it promoted institutionalized racism and promoted a culture of exclusion particularly for black students. Through a qualitative content analysis of tweets and a network analysis using NodeXL, this article argues that despite the digital divide in South Africa, and limited access to the internet by the majority of citizens, Twitter was central to youth participation during the RMF campaign, reflecting the politics and practices of counter-memory but also setting mainstream news agendas and shaping the public debate. The article further argues that the #RMF campaign can be seen a collective project of resistance to normative memory production. The analysis demonstrates how social media discussions should not be viewed as detached from more traditional media platforms, particularly, as in this case, they can set mainstream news agendas. Moreover, the article argues that youth are increasingly using social networking sites to develop a new biography of citizenship which is characterized by more individualized forms of activism. In the present case, Twitter affords youth an opportunity to participate in political discussions, as well as discussions of broader socio-political issues of relevance in contemporary South African society, reflecting a form of subactivism.

Young women and ‘technologies of the self’: Social networking and sexualities

abstract Previously, cellphone ownership in South Africa was for a privileged few, but today it has become an essential part of the adolescent fashion accessory. Similarly, access to the internet is more widespread with the rise of the mobile internet, and online social networking applications are very popular in South Africa, particularly among young people across all social classes. This study explores young womens use of mobile and online social networking sites, with specific reference to expressions and experiences of sexual identity via their mobile phones and popular application Facebook. Through a qualitative approach, this study argues that Facebook and MXit provide a space for play, especially for those whose freedom of movement is limited by parental concerns about safety. Online social networks create a cult of femininity and reflect womens role in society and also socialise young women into these roles. Gender and sexuality are lived social relations and ongoing performative processes that are continuously being negotiated. The micro-narratives and practices highlighted in this study present a snapshot of the lived practices of young women and indicate similarities with global trends in terms of online youth cultures. Young womens use of online and mobile social networking resonates with a global youth culture, with tensions around relationships, self-presentation and sexuality located firmly at the centre.

Contextualising journalism education and training in Southern Africa

In this article it is argued that journalism education in Southern Africa must contend with defining a new academic identity for itself, extricating itself from dependency on Western oriented models of journalism education and training, as this has been a perennial challenge in most of Africa.

African Feminist Media Studies

The media constitute social realities, meaning and power, and, in many developing states, are sites of social and political struggle. Political and economic developments in African media over the last two decades have led to significant media transformation, with, I would argue, a concurrent dearth of feminist media scholarship (see also Audrey Gadzekpo 2009). Media monitoring initiatives, such as the Global Media Monitoring Project, which has now reported on the ways in which women have been portrayed in the news since 1995 to the present day, show that the media often continue to produce subtle manifestations of sexism and gender stereotypes. Additionally, it is important to point out that there are few women owners or managers of mainstreammedia organizations; women are still disadvantaged by the context of unequal global wealth distribution (Mickey Lee 2006). Increased gender activism and advocacy has led to more media coverage, but “patriarchal framing of stories, ill-considered language and non-contextualized reporting undermines such stories” (Gadzekpo 2009, p. 74). Ten years ago in the inaugural issue of Feminist Media Studies, Aida Opuku-Mensah (2001) observed that feminist research is rarely undertaken in Africa, and since then, I am afraid to say, very little has changed. Denise Buiten (2009) has shown how, in South Africa for example, as in many other parts of the continent despite numerous advancements in terms of progressive legislation, the media continue to reproduce discourses that counter progressive gender transformation. Important negotiations regarding gendered meaning often take place in the more informal sections of newspapers, such as opinion columns or jokes. Progressive feminist perspectives, moving beyond numerical representation towards greater attention to symbolic, relational and integrated understandings of gender, are generally lacking (Buiten 2009). This essay reflects briefly on what I believe to be certain key issues for feminist media scholars in the global South, with particular reference to Africa. These include a reconsideration of black feminist media studies and a call for the widening of these philosophies to include an even more diverse range of voices; an argument for the repositioning of self-reflexive and action-oriented methods, while recognizing that feminist qualitative research is already highly contested and diversified; and finally, I would like to consider the impacts of new media, which require further exploration by feminist media scholars, and which are particularly significant within the African context where we see rapid proliferation of new media, mobile and online social networking.

Blogging and tweeting climate change in South Africa

Abstract It is widely agreed that the mainstream mass media play an important role in the climate change debate by providing coverage and thus placing the issue on the public agenda; by providing their audiences with the key aspects of the debate and information related to mitigation and adaption; and, to a lesser extent, by driving policy agendas. Much research on media coverage of climate change is located in the North; and ‘the media’ is often taken to mean mainstream print newspaper media. As the body of literature exploring links between the media and climate change grows, there is a glaring absence of studies about and from the global South, and of a focus on ‘new’ forms of journalism and social media. With the global decline of newspaper circulation internationally and in South Africa, this article argues for an increased focus on digital journalism in the examination of the media coverage of climate change. Journalists’ blogs on the Mail & Guardian newspapers Thought Leader site, and Twitter newsfeeds are analysed qualitatively to argue that while there is some similarity in the coverage between print and online media, the latter has the potential to reach audiences more effectively and immediately, with the growth of the mobile Internet in South Africa.

Social Media and Community Radio Journalism in South Africa

Using a qualitative approach, this article explores South African community radio stations’ uses of the internet, particularly the online social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. Specifically, it explores the extent to which these sites are used in news production, and whether there is an increase in organization on the basis of network sociality instead of identity politics or communal social relations. Focusing on three community radio stations in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban (South Africa’s three largest cities), the article draws on anthropological methods of participant observation and qualitative interviews. The study argues that while the potential exists, in this case access to and the use of social media does not necessarily facilitate the formation of counterpublics or result in collective political action and networked activism. However, the technologies have impacted on the daily routines of community radio journalists who increasingly rely on the internet as a source of news; and in turn, their use of social media has led to greater access and participation for those audiences which are already online.

Twitter and Participatory Citizenship: #FeesMustFall in South Africa

The Fees Must Fall movement was a national, student-led protest which began in mid-October 2015, in a response to fee increases at South African universities. The protests arose from a broader context of declining government funding for higher education, as well as broader socio-economic inequalities and racial conflicts. During the height of the campaign, social networking site Twitter was used both as an organizing tool by students, and also as a space for national debate around related issues. The Fees Must Fall campaign falls into the category of what Postill describes as a viral campaign, with the main features of tweets with catchy slogans, explosive growth, social drama liminality, real time participation and intense but ephemeral news media coverage. The proposed chapter explores how the campaign used Twitter, in the context of an international growth in so-called ‘Twitter activism’, and wide-range online political participation. The methodology is a social network analysis of over a million tweets collected at the height of the protests, which will identify key actors and relationships. A qualitative content analysis will explore the purpose and nature of the online conversations via the hashtag #FeesMustFall. Much scholarly work on Twitter uses hashtags to identify tweets, to highlight particular conversations and communicative exchanges. The central question is to what extent virals such as #FeesMustFall strengthen or undermine public discourse, and whether political reality is framed by such virally shared digital content. In this instance, Twitter afforded youth an opportunity to participate in politics and set mainstream news agendas. While South Africa’s transition to democracy in the 1990s was not marked by violent revolution, rising social inequality has resulted in ongoing community protests, and the student protests can be seen within this context. Revolutionary student movements have always been a feature of transitional societies, and are appearing with increasing frequency in Western societies. The chapter contributes to understanding the role of the internet in fostering political participation and activism. Taking into account critiques of the internet by scholars such as Morozov and Dean, the proposed chapter explores the collective experiences of social media within the context of #FeesMustFall.

Print media coverage of service delivery protests in South Africa: A content analysis

ABSTRACT In recent years South Africa has seen an increase in ‘service delivery protests’ – protests related to the inadequate provision of services – as a result of growing citizen frustration resulting from high levels of economic inequality. Unemployment, housing, water and sanitation, electricity, corruption and municipal administration, health and crime, have all been listed as reasons for the protests, often described a ‘rebellion of the poor’. Given the frustration expressed by citizens using protest as a form of communication, the question arises whether the media covered these protests in a way to contribute to democratic participation, and how they were framed in relation to the young democracy in the country. Through a combination of quantitative content and qualitative framing analysis, this article explores mainstream print newspaper coverage of the protests, which we term ‘community protests’, to include the range of different types of protest and to signal that these protests are a bottom-up engagement by citizens to demand to be listened to. Mainstream mass media often subscribe to the protest paradigm, which includes delegitimisation and demonisation, highlighting the negative consequences of protests. Given the significance of the media as sources of collective knowledge and people’s perceptions of reality, this article explores how a sample of mainstream South African newspapers portray the conflict parties, and what kind of interpretations and value judgments are offered to frame the conflict.

Research in African journalism: Trends and projections

African journalism research has, for the most part, followed the patterns of mainstream Western journalism research in terms of topics of inquiry, research methodology and theoretical approaches. Journalism research from and about the continent has often been distinguished only in terms of its geographical focus. The international emphasis on quantitative methodologies and textual analysis has been largely mirrored in African journalism research. This article begins by asking whether African journalism is indeed unique and different in terms of how it is practised; and argues that if (as evidence suggests) it is, then the practice of African journalism research may also require a different approach. While the terms ‘African journalism’ and even ‘journalism’ remain highly contested, journalism should be seen as ideology, ‘where ideology is seen as a set of values and practices that serve to sustain a more or less “naturalized” way of seeing and interpreting the world’ (Deuze 2004). Despite this notion of universality, academic researchers turning their focus to African journalism and the various articulations of the field, should keep in mind the geographic and cultural peculiarities of the continent, and adapt their approaches accordingly.