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Faculty of Arts and Design

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Start date: 2021Subject: search.filters.subject.2001 Communication and Media Studies

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Putting forward sustainability as a model for journalism education and training
    (Informa UK Limited, 2024-01-01) Booker, Nancy; Mutsvairo, Bruce; Baliah, Dinesh; Adjin-Tettey, Theodora Dame; Holt, Kristoffer; Tallert, Lars; Mujati, Jean
    African journalism practice presents unique opportunities and challenges that require journalists to be equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge, and values to engage in sustainable journalism. Training institutions play a critical role in ensuring that journalists are not only professionally-ready to execute their mandate but also that they can safeguard and promote ethical values in their everyday work. Some of these values include “truth telling, independence, objectivity, fairness, inclusivity and social justice” (Gade, Nduka, and Dastger 2017, 10). Africa, like other regions of the Global South, has several journalism training institutions that provide an opportunity to challenge “hegemonic epistemologies and ontologies of Western-centric journalism studies” (Mutsvairo et al. 2021, 993). In the context of this submission, the present study investigates the current state of sustainable journalism in Africa. We examined data based on a syllabi analysis of journalism programs in Kenya, South Africa and Ghana to appraise what role sustainable journalism education and training could play in Africa. Findings show that efforts are already in place across select learning and training institutions but also point to profound gaps in the curriculum, pedagogy and resources needed to prepare journalists for sustainable journalism.
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    Digital sanctuary : exploring security and privacy concerns of congregants in the virtual church
    (Informa UK Limited, 2024-01-01) Adjin-Tettey, Theodora Dame; Kwofie, Juliana
    As contemporary churches continue to hire media teams to create and disseminate growing amounts of online content, questions of safety, security, and privacy are warranted. This study focuses on the case of a church in Ghana and explores the complex interplay between, ethical, security, and privacy issues in the online church. Data collection involved 170 survey respondents and eight (8) interview participants. The study found that convenience, flexibility, and device accessibility drove congregants’ reliance on the digital platforms of the church. However, there were discernible privacy and safety concerns like invasion of privacy, unauthorized access to personal information, potential for identity theft, and misuse of personal data for targeted advertising. While diverse perspectives were held by members of the media department of the church, there was a general lack of concern about the safety and security ramifications of disclosing personal sensitive information to audiences outside of the physical church as it was viewed as a potential point of inspiration for others. We recommend that churches develop guidelines around concerns raised by congregants to optimize congregants’ online security and safety, while also providing continuous awareness programs for congregants to protect their security and safety and be ethical users of digital platforms.
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    Print fashion magazines and the digital native generation
    (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, 2022-09-29) Mbombo, Mncedisi; Muthambi, Amukelani
    Over the years, digital media platforms have gained popularity and widespread usability among the digital native generation. In fact, there is a general perception in public discourse that the rise of new media technologies has conversely triggered a drastic decline in popularity and usage of print media. To challenge this perception, this article uses the case of print fashion magazines to argue that some kinds of traditional print media are still popular with the digital native generation. The article examines trends in the consumption of fashion magazines with particular focus on the conduct of digital natives. For the purpose of this article, the study applies the Uses and Gratifications theory to explore the extent to which print fashion magazines are still relevant to the digital native generation. The article used a qualitative approach and semi-structured interviews to collect data from digital natives who consume (buy or read) fashion magazines. Evaluating the impact of print fashion magazines on digital natives is useful because it is likely to help fashion magazine publishers to devise innovative ways to meet the expectations of digital natives. The findings of the study show that while most participants consume fashion magazines from digital platforms, a significant number still prefers print fashion magazines.
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    Reading parents : parody and paradox in Go the Fuck to Sleep
    (Elsevier BV, 2021-03) Smith, Jade; Adendorff, Ralph
    Aimed at frustrated parents whose young children refuse to go to bed, Go the Fuck to Sleep was a bestseller before it hit the shelves in 2011. Much of the book's humour lies in its juxtaposition of profanity-laden poetry with illustrations of children and nature that would not be out of place in a typical children's picture book – the books that parents read repeatedly to satisfy their restless children. Although the writer is a father speaking from his experience, creating this in-joke nurtures an imagined community of any caregivers who suffer the same fate night after night. A combination of APPRAISAL analyses, both verbal (cf. Martin and White 2005) and visual (cf. Painter et al. 2013), provides evidence for the ways in which the book shows how the child takes the power role in the bedtime routine of middle-class households. Visual choices follow the typical format of children's bedtime stories, with the child increasingly at the centre of the images. Verbal evaluations show that, at first, parents deny their children the items or activities that they want but later concede to their demands. As the narrator becomes more frustrated and desperate, the evaluations move from the idea of a secure sleep for the child, to questioning the child's honesty, to denouncing his parenting skills. This paradoxical role-reversal in the book allows parents some relief from the guilt that they might be bad parents because of their nightly loss of authority over the child. However, it also foregrounds the ideological issues at stake at bedtime.