School of Literature, Language and Media (ETDs)
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Item How the South African media’s engagement with think tanks shaped coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Karrim, Qudsiya; Finlay, AlanResearch on the relationship between media and think tanks points to evidence of an interdependent and mutually beneficial arrangement. Think tanks offer their expertise in return for exposure, but factors such as professional credibility, the resources at their disposal and their adherence to media logics impact the success of this exchange. To explore the think tank-media nexus in South Africa, this study draws on agenda building and source theories to examine the ways in which three South African news sites utilised think tanks in their coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Through a thematic analysis and purposively selected interviews with media and think tank staff, it details a range of engagements between journalists and experts that occurred on the public record and behind the scenes. Think tanks served as high-value sources, content producers and educational tools for the media. This is not only indicative of their agenda-building influence, but also highlights how experts are playing a compensatory role in under-resourced newsrooms.Item Compassion, Ethics, and AI in Literary Works by Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Marge Piercy and Ted Chiang(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Silber, Rachel Rose; Titlestad, MichaelThis dissertation considers the literary presentation of empathy and compassion in AI-human relations and the contingent ethical implications. It critically examines how four authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Marge Piercy, and Ted Chiang, imagine AI and robots, not as dystopian symbols of technological menace, but as entities capable of empathetic connections with humans. Contrasting traditional narratives that focus on the dangers of AI, this study highlights a shift towards a nuanced representation where AI exhibits characteristics of emotional responsiveness and compassion. Using a posthumanist theoretical framework, the paper explores the ethical implications of these portrayals, challenging the boundaries of moral responsibility towards artificial beings. This approach not only offers a fresh perspective on AI in literature but also provokes a re-evaluation of our societal and ethical norms in the age of advanced technology. This study aims to contribute to a revision of our understanding of humanity and empathy in the context of our evolving relationship with AI.Item FPL - The football league that time forgot(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Kamal, Rajiv; de Waal, ShaunI chose to do my Master’s long-form essay on the Federation Professional League (FPL). I have charted the legacy the league has left behind in terms of its history, players and impact. The FPL used sport as a tool to promote non-racialism and bring different racial groupings together. Despite there being not much recorded history about the league, the popularity and memories of it among some communities endures. While weaving in some aspects of history, which is essential to contextualise the overall story, I focused heavily on the players themselves and their experiences. Their motivations for playing in the FPL, their triumphs and defeats, the adversity they faced and what playing football in that particular league meant to them. It resulted in some incredibly varied and interesting stories – many of the former players and administrators have sharp memories and recall much of their experiences. I’ve also obtained a ‘third-eye’ perspective on the FPL, from former Post Newspaper Editor Brijlall Ramguthee who covered the league and knew many players and administrators. It was important for me to record the accounts of those still available before that history is lost forever. From a research perspective I focused on the popularity of soccer/football, nostalgia around the beautiful game, how psychology plays a role in how someone chooses to support a sports team or league, the significance of the World Cup in 2010 and the mythology behind sport – why do we remember players and sport events in a certain way and if that memory may not be perfectly accurate, does it diminish the story any less?Item Digital media technologies and the contributions they make to the sustainability of community radio stations – The example of Izwi LoMzansi FM(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Dube, Sakhile; Krüger, FranzThis study investigates the impact of digital media technologies, specifically mobile applications, and social media, on the sustainability of community radio stations. It places particular emphasis on three facets of sustainability: social, institutional, and financial, using Izwi LoMzansi FM as the case of the study. Community radio stations encounter significant sustainability hurdles, such as suboptimal programming and financial constraints, which hinder their ability to fulfil their democratic roles. While digital media technologies are revolutionising the community broadcasting scene in South Africa, local radio stations have been slow to adjust. This highlights the pressing need for these stations to attain economic self-reliance to maintain autonomy and interact effectively with advertising sectors. The research findings reveal that digital media technologies have the potential to contribute to the sustainability of Izwi LoMzansi FM, albeit with modest impacts in terms of social and institutional sustainability, and relatively limited effects on financial sustainability. Despite progress in leveraging digital media tools to enhance sustainability, the station faces persistent challenges, including high personnel turnover, a lack of specialised expertise in digital media technologies, the necessity for dedicated leadership to drive digital revenue, and the imperative to address the digital divide in terms of access and usage.Item Violence and Resistance in Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945)(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Magogo, Sandra Yeukai; Mkhize, KhweziThis study examines the presentation of violence in Wright’s works Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945). It seeks to argue that black violence is not savagery nor barbarism, but it is a response to it, as blacks attempt to redeem their humanity. It explores the conditions of African Americans who were facing social and actual death the American society and had no choice but to react in a violent manner. Violence is an outstanding theme in Richard Wright’s works. Colonial literature by white authors normally portrays blacks as violent, savage, and barbaric. This negative identification of blacks has been contested by Richard Wright in Black Boy and Native Son which usually show whites as pioneers of violence. Native Son and Black Boy grapple with the subject matter of African American struggles for survival against a plethora of brutal experiences due to slavery, discrimination, and racism. Wright therefore responds to historical and contextual realities of black lives and suggest that the violence his protagonists exhibit is a rational reaction to officialised and sanitised white violence. According to this study, violence can be a crucial and creative instrument for resistance in the development of new identifications which are primarily barred by prejudice and discrimination. By making an argument that violence is sometimes required and unavoidable, this study aims to challenge the widely held belief that it is detrimental and, therefore, not acceptable. The basic premise of this study is that, from the perspective of African Americans, American civilization is based on violence, and the only means by which to address it is by using violence. As a result, violence ceases to be a tool for wreaking havoc and assumes revolutionary and creative importance. Hence the study employs Marxist Theory, the concepts of “Counter violence” from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Paulo Freire’s “Dehumanization.” Thus, textual analysis as a method of gathering and analysing data was used to free the discourse from the reactionary dogma which equates white people’s violence on blacks with civilization and resistance by black people with pure evil. The main objective of Wright is to show that black people’s way of life and how they behave, was imposed on them by the white racial system. This study thus aimed to unpack the relationship between colonial violence and counter violence as addressed in Wright’s Native Son and Black Boy. It has unveiled the true nature of violence in its relationship to the idea of resistance, basing its analysis on the concept of Afro pessimism.Item Giving voice: An analysis of the media’s reporting on the failed insurrection, looting and arson in July 2021 in South Africa.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Masiza, SimphiweThis dissertation explores what the dominant voices in the media coverage of the failed insurrection of July 2021 revealed about the ideologies at play? The research further probed what discourse and ideologies were revealed regarding the way the failed insurrection, looting, and arson that took place in July 2021 were covered. The dissertation provides a background discussion of the media landscape. It then discusses the relevant literature review focusing on issues of media voices, absence, representation, and underrepresentation of certain groups in the media. The research employed qualitative discourse analysis on forty (40) online articles. Furthermore, it tested the findings using a radical democratic, symbolic annihilation and a political economy of the media theoretical framework. The limitations of the research surfaced due to the reliance on daily publications such as the Daily Sun, Sowetan as well and the Independent Online articles (IOL) mainly because weekend publications such as the Sunday Times provided limited data as they reported on the events outside the focal dates. Dependence on mainstream data rather than a balance between community and national was a further limitation. The analysis pointed to media content that is classed and ideologically mediated, it also indicated that the plurality of voices encouraged by the main theoretical framework of radical democracy is highly compromised and some groups are more visible than others. As guided by the research questions the dissertation revealed various ideologies and discourses and concluded that those that were preferred by the media were mainly dominated by the elite or privileged members of society.Item Contested Subjectivities in Textual and Visual Representations of Jacob Zuma(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Makupula, Siwongiwe Chumani; Musila, Grace A.This MA research report studies visual, textual and musical portrayals of former South African president, Jacob Zuma. The study was undertaken through an analysis of material categorised into three genres: biography, music, and visual culture. In the category of biography, I looked at Jeremy Gordin’s Zuma: A Biography (2006) and Redi Tlhabi’s Khwezi: The Remarkable Story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (2017). I was particularly interested in the ways Zuma’s public rape trial is presented as an obstacle in Gordin’s Zuma and as a centripetal force in Tlhabi’s Khwezi. From this, I demonstrated the ways these representations of Zuma map gender constructions in South African politics. With music, I was interested in the ways the former president uses struggle songs to construct an image of victimhood while reminding the public about his personal sacrifices in South Africa’s armed struggle I further looked at the ways maskandi music, through ethnonationalist logics, endorsed a “militant” Zuma. Lastly, I looked at Zuma as a heroic figure in amapiano and the ways that communicates Black exigencies in peri-urban South Africa. In the last category, visual culture, I looked at the slipperiness of parody in a country overdetermined by a history of racial tension. I explore the strengths of the portraits and where they offer poignant criticism of the former president. Three of the four portraits are inspired by the predatory sexuality covered in the first chapter while one, “Umshini Wam” is inspired by opportunist and self-serving practices of Zulu culture explored in the chapter on music. I demonstrate that even with these conditions, the erect Black penis is inadvertently harmful. As this should suggest, the three chapters outline three different paradigms to conflicts of subjectivity in post-apartheid South Africa. The first chapter takes a gender studies approach to map violent masculinity performances while trying to locate the place of women in these spectacular displays of [ethno] nationalism. The second chapter, where we study visual portrayals, focuses on class and race as the guiding categories of analysis. We argue that with South Africa’s complicated and violent colonial then apartheid history, racialized exchanges are inevitably charged with a range of discourses. This chapter argues that the “rainbow-nation” narrative prevents South Africans from meaningful engagement with histories of racial and economic formations and this lack manifests itself in negative social exchanges that are inadvertently harmful and potentially retraumatizing. In the final chapter, our guiding paradigm is ethno-cultural codes of social organizing. These guiding or dominant paradigms do not exist 6 exclusively as is evident in the final chapter where gender is an operative category in tandem with ethnic and class subjectivities. As such, this report argues that these categories infuse each other and manifest as complicated mixtures in all three genres studied.Item Exploring early-stage digital transformation in secondary mathematics education(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mata, Songezo; Abrahams, LucienneResearch problem: Digital transformation or technology integration in secondary mathematics education in South Africa is at an early stage. Technology integration can be used in either an enhanced manner (substitution or augmentation) or a transformational manner (modification or redefinition) as described by the substitution-augmentation-modification-redefinition (SAMR) model. The enhancement level is regarded as the early stage in this research study. Previous studies on South African schools have not thoroughly investigated the data and dimensions associated with shifting digital transformation in secondary mathematics education beyond the early stage. Hence, this study investigates the use of digital technologies for teaching mathematics in secondary schools, which are critical for the deep conceptual understanding needed for better education outcomes. Method/approach: Grounded in a social constructivist approach, this qualitative study undertook two complementary case studies. Western Cape Education Department (WCED) and Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) schools were examined via semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis to collect the necessary data. This was done to examine the study’s four dimensions, namely the digital skills of educators, digital leadership, digital infrastructure, and the digital teaching experience. The data were collected purposefully from key secondary mathematics stakeholders (teachers, district officials, academics, local development agency officials, and independent experts) in the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces. The study explored the early use of dynamic software applications – GeoGebra and Geometer’s Sketchpad, amongst others. Findings: The findings from the two case studies identified the need for (i) a holistic digital transformation in the secondary mathematics environment framework; (ii) an appropriate governance structure for digital education policy design, implementation, and monitoring; (iii) a continuous evolving technical architecture; and (iv) a focus on digital pedagogy for mathematics, to shift digital transformation in secondary mathematics beyond the early stage. Conclusions: The use of digital technologies such as Excel, GeoGebra, and Geometer’s Sketchpad in a transformational manner for teaching mathematics in secondary schools is linked to the promotion of deep conceptual understanding for the improvement of mathematics education outcomes. Based on the data analysis, the study proposed a digital transformation in secondary mathematics education 2022 (DT-SME 2022) framework as a theoretical and practice-oriented framework for South Africa. The study theorises that shifting digital transformation in secondary mathematics education beyond the early stage can be facilitated by applying the DT-SME 2022 framework, which advocates (i) the kinds of intermediate and advanced digital skills that are crucial for the successful implementation of digitally supported teaching of secondary school-level mathematics; (ii) attention to digital leadership, including the establishment of a formal governance structure for the participation of all stakeholders during the design, implementation, and monitoring of digital education policy; (iii) an effective technical architecture to address connectivity issues; and (iv) a constructive and enjoyable digital teaching experience that encourages learning-centred pedagogical approaches.Item The Heart Experience: A Study of Poetry and Piety in Methodist Hymnody in the Eighteenth Century in Britain(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Worster, Starr Liane; Houliston, VictorThis study engages in an exploration of the poetics of Methodist hymnody of the eighteenth century in Britain focusing on Charles Wesley, William Williams and Ann Griffiths. Throughout, the reference point is that of the heart experience which shapes the hymns both in terms of poetic expression and theological belief. Methodism was – and is – above all, an experiential faith, a faith of not only knowing but also feeling God and it is in this confluence of knowledge and emotion that the hymnists of the eighteenth century gave voice to what was for all of them a spiritual pilgrimage. It is a confluence which inspired and informed the hymns, and which is brought to bear on the examination of what John Wesley calls the ‘Spirit’ of poetry and piety at the core of this study. The transforming power of Methodism on British society is universally accepted. John Wesley’s preaching, ministry and organisational abilities were key, but as much as hearing the spoken word played a major role in evangelisation so, too, did the sung hymns of Charles Wesley and others like him. Their poetic expressions of spirituality served to inspire, to encourage, to teach but, most of all, to bring people together in shared worship of their God. The hymns were both a personal articulation of Christian faith and the spiritual journey and an inclusive means of expression for all believers. Charles Wesley, a founder of Methodism along with his brother, John, gave to the movement an enduring channel of evangelism, testimony and testament to the power and love of God through the creative output of his hymns. They emerge out of the context of a spirituality that was focused and devotional; the poetry in his hymns became a means to express praise and reverence to God, and the communication of his faith and religious experience was underscored, in every instance, by his linguistic, thematic and stylistic choices. Charles Wesley was at the forefront of hymnody as it manifested in eighteenth- century Britain although certain figures, namely William Williams and, at the end of the century, Ann Griffiths, became the voices of a Welsh hymnic expression. While Charles Wesley and Williams were evangelists as well as poets, Griffiths wrote to convey her deeply personal and mystic experience of God; all three, nonetheless, used the hymn form to articulate poetically the experience and intensity of emotion in the journey of faith. Methodism’s religion of the heart is at the forefront of all its creeds, its mission, its ministry, but nowhere is this more evident than in its hymns. It is in the consideration of the manifestation and poetic functionality of that heart experience that the crux of this thesis lies.Item Exploring cyber misogyny and women journalists’ work and practice in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Nyamweda, Tarisai L.; Daniels, GlendaWomen journalists are increasingly facing cyber misogyny. However, there is a paucity of research and evidence, particularly in the global South, on this worrying phenomenon. This research study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on cyber misogyny and its effect on women journalists’ practice through documenting their experiences of cyber misogyny and how it affects journalism work and practice as well as contribute to new insights on recommendations to deal with the issue. It uses in depth interviews with selected media development and feminist organisations to understand the phenomenon of cyber misogyny as it relates to women journalists who have encountered cyber misogyny, to collect information to inform this study. Data collected has been augmented by content analysis of selected X posts generated by journalists and the responses from audiences on the selected X posts. The data collected from the in-depth interviews was analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The research is grounded on feminist theory, the concept of the role of the media in democracy and hegemonic masculinity, and uses the concept of journalistic routines as a lens through which to examine the effects of cyber misogyny on journalism practice.