3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item ‘Tweeting in Solidarity’: a corpus linguistics-driven analysis of tweets during the South African student protests(2018) Bolton, AméThe social media boom has affected people the world over, allowing them a platform to voice their opinions and sentiments, but also allowing them to create connections with people around the globe. In many instances, these connections have been based on shared political beliefs, effectively creating ‘issue communities’, which has lent itself to the reappropriation of social media as a space that can facilitate political activism both in the online sphere and in the physical sphere, as well as widening the action opportunities for participation. This work seeks to uncover the different identities, communities, and discourses that were constituted on the social media site Twitter during the student protests spanning from the #RhodesMustFall protest of 2015, to the #FeesMustFall protests that spread like a veldt fire through 26 of South Africa’s universities. Collections of 1000 tweets per hashtag (namely #RhodesMustFall, #OpenStellenbosch, #WitsFeesMustFall and #UCTFeesMustFall) were collected and run through the corpus linguistics software AntConc, whereafter findings were analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Overall, users were able to use Twitter for the purpose of information-sharing by reporting on the live events of the protest, requesting resources and for the purposes of organization and planning. While the ‘fallist’ protests, which are often categorized and grouped under the umbrella as the student protests of South Africa, further analysis exposed that in fact, the discourses that were prominent in the earlier protests, namely the #RhodesMustFall and its derivative protest #OpenStellenbosch were far more aimed at the metaphysical conditions of higher education, where the #FeesMustFall protests focused on the material conditions of student life. Moreover, it was found that Twitter’s main function was in fact to behave less as a tool or additional paradigm to traditional participation, in the stead of its use as a means for bringing ideas such as free education into the political imagination, as well as for users to bring their private lived experiences into the public sphere, and thereby creating new types of subject positions and public identities.Item Risks and motivation in the use of social network sites: an empirical study of university students(2016) Nkwe, NugiSocial Network Sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Piniterest and Google+ have made it easy for youth to communicate, produce and share information. Using SNS has become a daily activity for many youth and young adults around the world, including South Africa. The use of SNS by youth may be motivated by needs for safety, belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization, and others such as enjoyment. Yet, the use of SNS by youth may also carry a number of risks. They include risks to violations of privacy, social and psychological risks that may harm the user’s self-image, as well as time and financial risks resulting from excessive SNS usage. The purpose of this study is to understand the tension between risks and motivation in the use of SNS by university students. To do so, this study developed an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Multi-dimensional risk and motivation constructs were examined for their interactions with TAM constructs of perceived ease of use and perceive usefulness and their effects on SNS usage intentions and actual usage were examined. To test the model, a non-probability convenience sampling method was adopted using students from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Five hundred and fifteen students participated in the study. The ages ranged between 18 and 34 years, 26% males and 74% females took part in the study, and included students from 1st year through to 4th year undergraduate or Honours level. Facebook was found to be the most used SNS. Approximately 80% of respondents reported accessing SNS on their mobile phones and 66% reported being always connected. More than 25% of respondents were actively using SNS for more than 3 hours a day, with 35% using less than one hour per day. Interestingly, only 35% reported having public profiles although 10% did not know whether their profiles were public or private, and nearly 40% of respondents knew less than half the “friends” they were connected to on SNS Partial least squares approach to structured equation modelling was used to test the hypothesised research model. Results showed that motivation influences perceived usefulness (β=0.239, p<0.001) and perceived ease of use (β=0.319, p<0.001) positively. The results suggest that when motivations such as enjoyment and need to belong are high, SNS will be perceived as useful and easy to use. Risk was found to have a negative influence on perceived usefulness (β=-0.0764, p<0.05) and perceived ease of use (β=-0.3265, p<0.001). The results show that when risks are considered high, users are likely to increase their vigilance and consequently will report SNS as less easy to use. Moreover, as a result of risk users may find the SNS less useful. Perceived usefulness (β=0.295, p<0.001) influences intention to use SNS positively. This suggests that when SNS is useful to users, they will have intentions to use it. Intention to use SNS is also influenced by perceived ease of use (β=0.0396, p<0.01). An easy to use SNS will make users want to use it, as opposed to one considered more complex and requiring more effort. Motivation (β=0.281, p<0.001) was found to have more of an effect than risk (β=-0.071, p<0.05) on intentions to use. Respondents thus appear to recognize some risks associated with SNS use, but they appear to be driven more by motivations and less by risk avoidance when deciding on SNS usage. The study will have implications for researchers, SNS providers and users. The results of the study have implications for how researchers conceptualize risk and motivation. The study shows how different dimensions of risk and dimensions of motivation affect the overall risk and overall motivation construct respectively. Currently SNS providers may not have deep understanding of the risks which hinder the use of SNS and motivations which drive the use of SNS. Providers will be better informed to design SNS that are less risky and where possible mitigate the risks. Results also show that SNS providers should not only mitigate risks but also provide online social networks that better fulfil motivational needs of youth. Users will be aware of different risks they are exposing themselves to by using SNS. Since users will be aware of the different types of risks, they can be vigilante when using SNS.Item Nudity in the name of social change: Twitter reactions to the Marie Claire South Africa 2015 Naked Campaign(2016) Sibanda, Moagisi RefilweSince 2007, Marie Claire South Africa (SA) — which is a glossy women’s magazine covering fashion and beauty trends, sex, relationships, body image, and celebrity news — has been running a special issue of the print magazine called the “Naked issue”. Each year celebrities pose naked in the special issue to raise awareness for a cause, and in doing so funds in aid of a particular organisation linked to the cause are raised. Marie Claire SA calls this awareness-raising initiative the “Naked Campaign”. For the 2015 Naked Campaign, the magazine had 35 celebrities pose in the nude to raise awareness about sexual violence, in aid of Blow the Whistle (BTW), an anti-rape initiative which supports women and children who are victims of abuse and rape. This research is a case study of Marie Claire SA’s March 2015 Naked Campaign edition, and focuses on the Twitter reactions to this edition. It asks: to what extent did the Twitter reactions to Marie Claire SA’s 2015 Naked Campaign show engagement on the issue of sexual violence and can the use of nudity to attract attention to a social issue result in the kind of engagement that can be said to drive the cause forward? Using content analysis, it examines the tweets generated by the hashtag #MCNaked in the first week of the naked issue going on sale. It categorises the tweets according to gender, comments on nudity, celebrities and sexual violence, as well as the tone of the tweets and the understanding therein of the campaign and cause. The research found that the majority (close to 70%) of the Twitter reactions were supportive of the campaign and the cause. Although over half of the comments focused on the celebrities, over 50% of tweets commented or focused on the issue of sexual violence, a positive outcome for the campaign. Despite the magazine catering mostly for female readers, there was an almost equal number of tweets by males and females, which meant men were also drawn to the discussion started by a media product followed mostly by women, another positive finding for the campaign. However, only a few of the tweets displayed more substantial engagement with the issue of sexual violence, through either sharing statistics or further information, or including anti-sexual violence statements in their tweets. The research suggests that, taken as a whole, the campaign can be considered as an example of social marketing, while also fulfilling the news values in terms of elements of surprise, personalities, power and marketability.Item Two commercial music radio stations and their use of Twitter(2016) Smurthwaite, MichaelThis research report is an exploratory study into two regional commercial music stations (YFM and 947) and their use of Twitter as a tool to relate to, interact with and enable participation from their audiences. Of particular interest was why they are using it, what they are doing with it and how this affects the on-air content pre, during and post broadcast, if at all it does. [Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version]