1,720,960 research outputs found
Public Sector Communication in the Digital Age
No full text“Public sector communication in Southern Africa cannot be understood outside the factors shaped by the region’s historical context, political transitions and, subsequently, the need for transparent and inclusive governance." In the past decade, digital communication technologies have surged due to the fourth industrial revolution, reshaping communication dynamics with more interactive engagement and rapid feedback. These advancements in the public sector have connected stakeholders to previously inaccessible state branches in South Africa and beyond. Public sector leaders now use digital tools to bolster their brands and demonstrate servant leadership by enhancing service delivery through improved access. This book brings together diverse scholars who contribute insights that analyse the latest theories and practices in the realm of public sector communication in the digital age. It encompasses theory-driven analyses, applied methodologies, and case studies that capture the current realities in public sector digital communication in Southern Africa
Chief with a Double Agenda: Unravelling the Puzzle to Buthelezi’s Animosity towards Mzala Nxumalo
Full text linkThe demise of King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu in 2021, the longest-reigning Zulu monarch on record (3 December 1971-12 March 2021), and that of the queen regent Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu, brought Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi into the limelight. As the traditional prime minister of the Zulu kingdom and an elder statesman, Buthelezi strategically seized upon this solemn occasion to reinforce his preferred historical narrative. Seeking sympathy and aiming to portray himself as a peacemaker on the right side of history, he singled out Mzala Nxumalo as a “propagandist” intent on tarnishing his reputation. This article contends that Mzala’s book, “Gatsha Buthelezi: Chief with a Double Agenda”, lies at the core of this animosity, spanning over three decades. Therefore, it traces Mzala’s central arguments presented in the book and examines Buthelezi’s responses to them. Additionally, the article provides an overview of Mzala’s background and his relationship with Buthelezi, summarising the primary thesis articulated in his book regarding Buthelezi’s role in the South African political landscape. While acknowledging weaknesses in Mzala’s methodology and academic approach, particularly in terms of rigour, the article asserts the enduring significance of his book in shaping scholarly discourse. It argues for the “unbanning” of the book, emphasising its importance in fostering academic dialogue and upholding principles of academic freedom. The article underscores the necessity of diverse perspectives, including critical ones, in achieving a comprehensive understanding of historical events
New features of media imperialism: The South African online media and the coverage of the Ukrainian war
Full text linkThe coverage of the war in Ukraine has unravelled inherent biases within the South African online commercial media. These biases are largely driven by its location within the global capitalist power structures, thus confirming continuities of media imperialism. By relying on Western sources, this media invariably exports Western norms, standards, hegemonic narrative and worldview. This paper employs content analysis to examine the coverage of the war by five South African online publications (News24, IOL, TimesLive, Citizen.co.za and BusinessTech) between January and February 2022. The coverage was largely negative because of concerns about the impact on global markets. The West’s dominant views are discernible due to the chosen sources, with over 80 per cent coming from its newswires. Similarly, the opinions of Western political and business leaders and their business and economic analysts are prevalent. While it is expected for stories to be framed from a conflict perspective, it is the economic consequences frame that also drives the coverage, with Russia blamed, as reflected in the predominant theme “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine”. While there have been fundamental developments since the concept of media imperialism emerged, this coverage points to some continuities. It is precisely for this reason that the South African media should develop partnership beyond the West, more so, in the context of the growing importance of BRICS
Corporate media and the nationalisation of the economy in South Africa: a critical Marxist political economy approach
Full text linkA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Studies, Johannesburg, July 2017This thesis analyses the representation of the nationalisation of mines debate, as a developmental policy discourse, by the South African corporate media. Essentially, the objective is to ascertain the corporate media’s role and influence on ideology-laden developmental policy discourses. Post-apartheid, the South African corporate media has often been accused of bias by various social actors, including South Africa’s governing party – the African National Congress. These accusations have been accompanied by perceptions of the media’s inability and unwillingness to partner with government in its endeavour to implement its developmental agenda. This perceived bias is accentuated when it comes to ideologically laden issues such as nationalisation. Therefore, this research study grapples, inter alia, with questions behind the drivers of these perceptions, the manner in which the media portrays the developmental policy discourse, and the role the media should be playing in the country’s developmental agenda. In its endeavour to respond to some of these questions, the research study thus focuses on the representation of the nationalisation of mines debate by the South African English corporate press in 2011. Given the complex nature of the discourse, the research study utilises both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies; triangulation in particular presents this thesis with numerous advantages towards attaining deeper understanding of the representation of the nationalisation discourse. Whereas quantitative content analysis helps identify and count the number of articles and related elements in the articles, qualitative content analysis offers a chance to probe further various elements in the discourse. In-depth semi-structured interviews are also used as a secondary research technique to discover new clues on the discourse.
The research study is based on one major assumption – that structural factors such as ownership and control influence the representation of ideological policy discourses such as nationalisation – and is underpinned by four major theoretical frameworks – the critical political economy of communication; Marxist media analysis; social production of news; and decolonial theories. To comprehensively analyse the representation of nationalisation, the research study focuses on content analysis of news articles, looking at various aspects such as the structure of news as well as its headlines, sources and the general representation of the discourse; utilises theories of the critical political economy of the media and other related theories such as the social production of news and Marxist media analysis to perform qualitative content analysis; scrutinises economic factors in line with the assumption of the
study that structural factors influence the representation of the discourse by using the Marxist theories to unpack the representation of nationalisation; and utilises Marxist theories in conjunction with decolonial theories.
Among the findings of the research study presented in this thesis is that global capitalism, accompanied by factors such as commercialisation and advertising, influences the representation of ideologically laden policymaking discourses. Ownership and transformation of the corporate media also shape the representation. In this discourse there is convergence, and thus it is apparent that the media plays a pivotal role in reproducing dominant ideology which fundamentally maintains capitalism as “an inevitable and immutable” system. Also, the relationship between the state and media relations is a factor in ideological developmental discourses. Indeed, the representation of the nationalisation discourse is essentially a reflection of the corporate media’s posture towards the broader developmental state and its portrayal of ideologically laden policy discourses.XL201
The coverage of industrial action by the Mail & Guardian, 1999-2004
No full textM.A., Journalism and Media Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2006The focus of this study is on the coverage of industrial action by the Mail & Guardian between 1999 and 2004. Mainly, the study seeks to understand the coverage of labour issues by the newspaper in post-apartheid South Africa. It is argued that the coverage, or lack of coverage, of labour issues by the paper is related to socio-economic and political conditions in the country. Literature on the influential role the ownership and control of media play in the content of news, as well as the influence of advertising, is analysed to attain a clear understanding of the pattern of coverage of labour news in post-apartheid South Africa. Therefore, the study uses the coverage of industrial action as a yardstick to measure as well as to understand the extent and the shift in editorial content of the newspaper with specific reference to industrial action. The main argument of the study is that the prevailing socio-economic and political conditions in South Africa, brought about by the advent of democracy, coupled with structural limitations play a fundamental role in determining the manner in which working-class issues are currently covered by the Mail & Guardian. It emerges in the study that the manner in which labour news in general and industrial action in particular are covered has shifted and thus replaced in the main by articles on labour politics. The extent to which the Mail & Guardian covers industrial action in the post-apartheid era has declined, and more emphasis is being placed on other beats that are not directly the interests of the poor and the working class
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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