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Social media and culture clash: Examining cultural influence on Facebook crisis communication in Botswana
Get PDFMulticultural crisis communication in Botswana has become complex due to the country’s various ethnicities and cultures. Facebook remains a dominant communication platform, but traditional media is also used to cover organisational exigencies. However, there is a lack of research guiding public relations (PR) practitioners in multicultural crisis communication in Botswana, and this study addresses this gap. Semi-structured interviews with 20 Botswana PR practitioners revealed that they use Facebook to manage crises, but do not engage in online dialogue with the public. Instead, they post status updates and switch to offline cultural communication platforms for face-to-face dialogue. This article proposes and introduces a Botswana-focused model, the Cross Cloverleaf Relationship Model (CCRM), that probably resonates with similar contexts in Sub-Saharan African countries. The model facilitates authentic crisis communication between Facebook and the kgotla system, Botswana\u27s traditional and cultural communication platform. I suggest that multinational companies may find the kgotla system helpful during emergencies in Botswana
‘There is a sense of bravery in having to make a mark’: Resilience and art therapy in South Africa
Get PDFThis article is located within the complex landscape of South Africa’s mental healthcare system and its associated challenges regarding socioeconomic and historical injustices. Despite decades of enquiry across diverse fields, the concept of resilience remains subjective. Although tentative connections to creativity, artmaking, and art therapy exist, a contextually relevant South African-focused investigation is missing, providing the gap for this research. Using a constructivist-interpretivist framework and qualitative methodology, discoveries as to how training art therapists conceptualise, utilise, and safeguard their resilience through artmaking were generated. Data was gathered using individual, semi-structured interviews amongst five purposively sampled training art therapist participants and thematic analysis was used to present the findings. Results provide insight into how training art therapists foster resilience through artmaking which equips them to offer similar opportunities for their clients. Findings also suggest that resilience is as crucial for practitioners as it is for clients, especially if the modality is to be sustained long term. Some suggestions for safeguarding practitioner resilience are offered. Consequently, the article offers some evidence as to how and why art therapy offers an accessible and alternative form of healing for people living in South Africa
“It’s about finding and knowing myself”: Why Johannesburg-based South African Millennials consume self-help media
Get PDFUsing semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a group of ten middle-class, internet-connected, South African millennials in Johannesburg, Gauteng this analysis explores the psychosocial gratifications derived from their self-declared active sourcing and consumption of self-help media texts. Developing within the uses and gratifications theoretical framework, the article finds that self-help media texts (books, blogs, videos, etc., significantly sourced from digital platforms via the internet) are sought as tools that offer a psychological “quick fix” to the day-to-day psychosocial “problems” that push the interviewed participants to seek coping mechanisms. The article presents evidence to demonstrate that self-help media texts are consumed by the interviewees to gratify a psychosocial need for self-knowledge where they engage self-help media texts as surveillance mediums on which they rely to better “find” and “know” themselves in relation to others, as far as socially “acceptable” interpersonal behaviour is concerned. As such, these Johannesburg-based South African millennials consume self-help media texts, and the moral grammar of norms, beliefs, and values about successful living encoded therein, as tools for self-management with the goal of “mastering” the self – in relation to others – to understand how best to behave to avoid the “mistakes” that impede the smooth-sailing of what these participants describe as their life journeys
Assessing awareness, knowledge, and perceptions of hubbly bubbly smoking health risks among South African university students
Get PDFGlobally, the smoking of hubbly bubbly tobacco pipes is a growing trend among young people. However, the promotion of health awareness about hubbly bubbly (HB) smoking risks does not appear to be common, especially in South Africa. This study intended to assess awareness of the HB smoking health risks among students; to determine the students’ knowledge levels about its risks; to examine the students’ perceptions of HB smoking and to determine whether their knowledge and perceptions on smoking health risks would influence their HB smoking behaviour intentions. The Extended Parallel Process Model was applied. A quantitative approach was applied with a sample of 350 students participating in the study: n = 175 HB users and n = 175 non-users. A 2×2 experimental design between and within participants was followed. Results indicate that most participants (75%) had not heard or seen any health communication awareness campaigns about HB risks and that knowledge about HB smoking health risks was inadequate. Most participants in the study, including both HB users 74% (129) and non-users 80% (140), were able to identify lung cancer as one of the health risks of HB smoking. This study is important to health promotion organisations including government departments to enable them to construct effective health communication messages
Relatability\u27s role in formative assessment and feedback practices of young Black academics in an access university
Get PDFTransformation and diversification efforts in South African higher education system continue thirty years into democracy. Access universities play a crucial role in attracting students from previously excluded groups to higher education, specifically Black learners from poor schools with the least resources. Black lecturers in access universities, through shared cultural identities and backgrounds, carry an unspoken responsibility, beyond academic duties, to develop inclusive assessment and feedback practices. This unspoken responsibility must be carried out without compromising academic curriculum requirements and became acutely important during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Through transdisciplinary pragmatism in pedagogical practice, relatability ensures that students engage in meaning-making through participation in the development of solutions that address hyper-localised problems, thus contextualising science in real-world contexts. This study evaluates the role of relatability in the development of inclusive, transdisciplinary, and pragmatic formative assessment and feedback practices for student success in higher education. It does this by comparing the practices and experiences of young, Black lecturers in an access university. Our formative assessment and feedback methodologies and analysis of our teaching portfolios are presented to demonstrate how our personal student experiences have shaped more inclusive practices. In the discussion, we highlight the influence of unspoken responsibilities on Black lecturers to develop student outcomes beyond academic success through assessment and feedback. We seek to highlight how relatability can be leveraged to improve formative assessment and feedback practices towards strengthening inclusive teaching and learning for students’ academic success
Perceptions of Chemical Engineering Students on Decolonizing the Curriculum by Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Practices
Get PDFThe #FeesMustFall movement, which rocked institutions of higher learning in South Africa in 2015/2016, inspired robust engagement around the decolonization of knowledge. Students argued that the epistemological context of higher education in South Africa does not reflect the African context. Activists argued that if the curricula did not speak to local issues, the challenges facing higher education would remain. Incorporating indigenous knowledge practices into mainstream education could signify a shift away from Western dominance in the local episteme. Engineering is not immune to decolonization. This paper attempts to extract the views and observations of 38 chemical engineering students, from second year until PhD level, at the University of Johannesburg on decolonizing the curriculum by incorporating indigenous knowledge practices. The data was generated through an open-ended questionnaire. The questionnaire required that participants briefly describe indigenous practices with the potential for elucidating chemical engineering principles. Participants identified umfuso, which is the process of drying vegetables in the sun, sieving with leselo, which is made up of reeds and is used to separate light materials from heavy ones, drinking cow urine as a remedy to cure various diseases, making traditional mageu, brewing traditional beer (umqombothi) and milling and grinding maize meal, as practices which they believe had potential to reshape the curriculum. The findings of the study show that students concurred with the call for decolonization and transformation of the chemical engineering curriculum, but that there was a lack of consensus on whether incorporating indigenous knowledge practices could help achieve it, as the system of acquiring education itself needs decolonization
Towards a Pedagogics of Epiphany
Get PDFThis article begins by focusing on critiques of the ideology and practice of neoliberalism in universities, nation-wide and globally. The argument proceeds to analyse alternative or counter-neoliberal strategies of reading, writing, and teaching propounded by selected scholars. My analysis reveals that, although these scholars argue the necessity of developing and putting into practice pedagogical strategies that contest those that are driven by the neoliberal agenda, they do little more than gesture toward implementation of these. By way of redressing this lack, I present a case study that indicates specific tactics for “slipping under the neoliberal radar”. This leads to a discussion of what I consider to be a crucial academic concern – the practice, or the art, of reading, as expressed by George Steiner (1978), John Williams in his novel Stoner (1965), and Éammon Dunne in an analysis of this novel (2016). It is my intention to show how these texts inspired me to concoct what I call a pedagogics of epiphany. I conclude my argument by explaining what I mean by this concept, and the ways in which its implementation might reflect a simultaneously radical and circumspect orientation toward the ongoing project of “doing academia differently”
Higher Education Hauntologies: Living with Ghosts for a Justice-to-Come, edited by Vivienne Bozalek, Michalinos Zembylas, Siddique Motala and Dorothee Hölscher
Get PDFIn this review of “Higher Education Hauntologies: Living with Ghosts for a Justice-to-Come,” we traverse an anthology that scrutinises the enduring systemic injustices in higher education. Drawing upon post-humanist theories, the book critiques the colonial legacies, Western-centric knowledge paradigms, and neoliberal ideologies that continue to influence these systems. Amid these critiques, it advocates for a future of justice-to-come, urging a transformative shift towards more inclusive and equitable educational models, thereby resonating with the realities and aspirations of the Global South. To imagine the future of justice-to-come, higher education in the Global South must excogitate the place of knowledge in developing a socially just curriculum to address epistemic in/justices
Doing Academia Differently: Taking Care of Humans, Technologies and Environments in the Digital Age
Get PDFIn this SoTL undertaking, we reflect on two of the most prominent issues of our time: new algorithmic ecologies and the ecological crisis. In particular, we are interested in what these mean for teaching, and teaching differently. To do so – and using the ‘Socratic method’, a dialogic technique of questioning and cooperative cross-examination that provokes critical thinking – we consider the refrains of death immanent to digitality and the Anthropocene, and how they affect not only subjective formation, but also knowledge production. Reflecting on these issues in our classrooms, for example the widespread disaffection prevalent in universities, aided by internet addiction, dopamine loops, the disintegration of societal rituals and bonds, and the looming ‘end of the world’ (at least as we know it), we consider the role of practices of care, drawing on the work of Stiegler, and Deleuze and Guattari. Our argument is that what is needed, against the intensified bureaucratisation and neoliberalisation of academic institutions, is careful experimentation for the production and circulation of healthier intensities that tend to and nurture life in the face of the refrains of death all around us.
