Online and digital media usage on cell phones among low-income urban youth in Cape Town

August in Brighton is traditionally a time of fish and chips, buckets and spades and the odd spot of 'light' rainfall.

Creating the future

The increased presence of Chinese media in Africa has been the focus of much debate since the early 2010s. Discussions tend to revolve around issues of production and content, providing little evidence on the way audiences decode media messages aimed at extending China’s “soft power.” This article uses data from seven focus groups with media and communication university students in Kenya and South Africa to explore the efficacy of Chinese-mediated public diplomacy. We show that Chinese media have little impact on students’ information habits, demonstrate that attitudes toward China are predominantly negative, and argue that this stereotyping affects opinions about Chinese media. We also suggest that some students’ favored news values overlap with those associated with Chinese media. This may indicate a potential affinity between the journalistic practice of Chinese media in Africa and that of future Kenyan and South African media professionals, which could increase the chances of China’s media engagements having an impact in the long term.

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How Influential Are Chinese Media in Africa? An Audience Analysis in Kenya and South Africa

After centuries of “Eurocentric” linguistic ideology, the South African government has formulated African language development and multilingualism as one priority in the education system. While onl...

Language, Africanisation, and Identity Politics at a South African University

A baseline study of youth identity, the media and the public sphere in South Africa

This article explores the relationship between certain South African media corporations, growing post-apartheid Zulu media platforms, the size and diversity of Zulu-speaking media consumers, and the historical socio-cultural construction of ‘Zuluness’. This relationship, this author observes, manifests largely through media corporations’ increasing recognition of Zulu people's pride in Zulu (i.e. the language) and ‘Zuluness’ – all of which are historical products of various forms of socialisation. Coopting this pride, profit-driven media corporations are commodifying Zulu and ‘Zuluness’. This commodification via the establishment of Zulu media outlets is paradoxical: 1) it is a transformation of a public and open Zulu cultural sense of ‘being’ into institutionally determined commodities exchangeable for revenue, for the ultimate benefit of media owners other than the masses of Zulus themselves; 2) it is a form of commoditisation that gives Zulu a linguistic profile that has historically been acco...

The meaning of post-apartheid Zulu media

Between 1987 and 2003 several academic works, particularly in the context of South African journalism and mass communication scholarship (JMCS), have explored the relationship between South African youth and news media in the research area of the global and the local. This thematic meta-study explores conceptual and methodological frameworks through which they have investigated this relationship. It concentrates primarily on the exploration and framing of the relationship; choice of medium of study; construction of youth identity; and preferred research methodologies and theoretical approaches. The investigation is contextualized within ontological, epistemological, and political-ideological debates in local JMCS, and in global discourses on youth and news media. The study concludes that post-1994 local studies largely adopted qualitative research methods, critical social theory, and cultural studies, rather than socialization and functionalist theories. The studies also defi ned youth in sociocultural, r...

South African Journalism and Mass Communication Research on Youth and News Media: A Reflection

This article examines the commercial advancements of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) into the African regional media markets. In this examination, the focus is mostly on the SABC's Africa-orientated channels, SABC Africa and Africa2Africa, as a case study. The article posits that the SABC's regional commercial expansion is paradoxical in the sense that it is both advantageous and disadvantageous at the same time. At the theoretical level, the article identifies some limitations to applying theoretical and analytical frameworks such as the dependency paradigm, media and cultural imperialism in explaining regional expansionism driven by Southern-based national media organisations.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation's expansion into Africa: South African media imperialism?

In this article the authors investigate the controversy surrounding the educational youth programme Yizo Yizo and the possible effects thereof on school children and members of the public. The research problem is situated against the background of the social responsibilities of the South African Broadcasting corporation (SABC) with the aim of establishing whether the producers of Yizo Yizo have violated the principles of the social responsibility theory by publishing information (television programmes) which has lead to crime, violence or social disruption, and which has offended sections of the viewing public. The authors argue that demands and outcries by members of the public and politicians to remove Yizo Yizo from the television screen, would be shortsighted. Yizo Yizo is a good example of social realism which succeeds in penetrating the root courses of problems in township schools. The excessive use of violence and graphic portrayal of rape and sodomy however, detracts from and overshadows ...

Musa Ndlovu

Papers

The meaning of post-apartheid Zulu media

South African Journalism and Mass Communication Research on Youth and News Media: A Reflection

The South African Broadcasting Corporation's expansion into Africa: South African media imperialism?

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and the social responsibility media theory: the case of Yizo Yizo

A baseline study of youth identity, the media and the public sphere in South Africa: