Doctoral Degrees (Journalism)

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https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/633

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Journalism) by browse.metadata.advisor "Botma, Gabriel"

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    Citizen journalism and alternative media in Zimbabwe: An ethnographic study of citizen participation, newsmaking practices and discourses at AMH Voices
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Tshabangu, Thulani; Botma, Gabriel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dept. of Journalism.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Technologies such as the internet and mobile smartphones allow citizens to play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news, thereby challenging the dominance of conventional media and professionalised ways of journalistic practices. This production-based ethnographic study investigates the operations of citizen journalism and alternative media in a repressive environment in Zimbabwe. It focuses on citizen participation, newsmaking practices and discourses at the citizen journalism and alternative media outlet of AMH Voices. The study is located within a specific context and timeframe, which isfrom 2014 to 2018, during which Zimbabwe’s multidimensional crisis elongated. Central to this study was an endeavour to demonstrate how the crisis supported the emergence of citizen journalism as well as how citizen journalists constructed and circulated alternative political narratives and counterhegemonic discourses of the crisis at AMH Voices. The theoretical point of departure in this study refers to the public sphere and critical political economy theories. The argument is that a counterpublic sphere emerged, in which AMH Voices was viewed as an oppositional public sphere that afforded marginalised citizens the opportunity to participate in journalistic processes. Participation in journalistic processes enabled ordinary citizens to express themselves and contest the hegemonic position by establishing counterhegemonic news frames, reframing news stories and setting new topics for discursive conflict and negotiation. The critical political economy theory (CPE) was applied to understand how ownership and control at AMH Voices impacted on editorial direction and output. The CPE theory was also applied to understand structural factors that constrained citizen journalism and alternative media in Zimbabwe. Data was collected through triangulated ethnographic methods of participant observation, interviews and critical discourse analysis. AMH Voices was under constant flux as citizen participation, newsmaking practices and discourses changed from the time of its inception in 2014 due to a change of context and organisational factors. The findings revealed that citizen participation occurred at three, namely levels of content production, decision making and public sphere deliberations. Content related participation enabled citizen journalists to contribute to news production processes in different ways and at different stages. Participation in decision making was through a reader representative who sat in the public editorial board to convey reader feedback and interests. Participation in public sphere deliberations was the most common form of citizen participation that occurred through user comments, where citizens engaged in peer to peer review of thoughts and ideas. The newsmaking practices at AMH Voices were structured, unstructured, hybrid and digital. The citizen news discourses were mostly framed in non-dominant perspectives using interpretive news writing styles to express alternative political narratives, challenge the status quo and advocate for radical political change. However, the study showed that citizen journalism and alternative media at AMH Voices were also influenced by contextual and structural pressures and influences, including conservative views on gender, which made it difficult to categorise it as an automatic or consistent counterpublic sphere.
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    Newswork in transition : An ethnography of Netwerk24
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-12) Jordaan, Marenet; Botma, Gabriel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Journalism.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study explores how journalists at Netwerk24, as Afrikaans news website and national newsroom, experience and describe newswork during a time of disruption and transition. Situated within the field of journalism studies, this newsroom ethnography analyses how newsroom culture is structured by, and structures, the way journalists interact with each other and with non-human actors, such as digital media technologies. A thorough literature review indicates that digital media technologies can, on the one hand, change newswork on a structural level. On the other hand, such technologies can also, often simultaneously, become naturalised parts of existing newsroom practices and routines. What becomes clear, however, is that a technocentric view of changes to the newsroom is too limited, and that the role of culture and context should also be considered. As such, a novel theoretical framework is used in order to address the historical dispositions that influence journalists’ actions, while simultaneously addressing the current associations that develop amongst journalists and between journalists and the so-called material “stuff” they use during newswork. The study thus relies on a combination of the basic tenets of Bourdieu’s field theory, more specifically the professional journalistic habitus, and Latour’s actor-network theory. The argument pursued in this study is that journalists who were and are socialised in a specific professional manner into newsroom culture are actors within an unstable news-producing network; a network where digital media technologies also play an active role. By using an ethnographic research design, this exploration of Netwerk24 adds to existing studies from within the newsroom; an approach that allows the researcher to open the so-called “black box” of newswork. More than 250 hours’ worth of participant observation field notes from four different geographical newsroom offices, in combination with semi-structured interviews with purposively selected research participants contribute to a better understanding of what happens where news is produced for Netwerk24. More importantly, the analysis of findings – using ATLAS.ti version 7 – provides insight into why the cultures, practices and routines at Netwerk24 are structured the way they are. The research findings reveal that digital media technologies (such as Facebook and WhatsApp), while key to newswork, are not the main drivers of change and disruption within the Netwerk24 newsroom. These technologies enable, or force, the journalists to be multi-skilled and thus add to their workload. Yet the Netwerk24 journalists appear to have accepted and incorporated these non-human actors quite naturally into their newswork. What is of more concern for the journalists are the culture and communication in the newsroom. A lack of clarity about radical changes, the influence of specific newsroom personalities, an inability to share the vision for Netwerk24 due to a perceived lack of internal communication, and other challenges to newswork seem to cause more uneasiness amongst journalists than technological disruptions. The study thus concludes that while most journalists are willing to adapt to change and accept the uncertainty of a future in journalism, they often hold on to traditional conceptualisations of journalism and crave to know where they fit into the Netwerk24 newswork network.
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    Sites of remembrance and forgetting : new media (re)constructions of distinct Ndebele collective memory and history in the context of hegemonic Zimbabwean Nationalism
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-12) Ndlovu, Mphathisi; Botma, Gabriel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Journalism.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examines new media reconstructions of Ndebele collective memory and history in the context of hegemonic Zimbabwean Nationalism. Situated within the overlapping fields of cultural studies, journalism and media studies, the research explores the possibilities of news websites as liberatory spaces for ethnic minorities, such as the Ndebele people, to recollect, mediate and circulate their historical narratives that have been marginalised and suppressed in the dominant nationalist spheres. Given that new media have been lauded as counter-hegemonic sites that promote political participation, civic engagement and social change, this study contributes to these scholarly engagements by examining how Ndebele people are appropriating three news websites (Newzimbabwe.com, Bulawayo24.com and Umthwakazireview.com) to resurrect, preserve and commemorate their repressed historical memories. In focusing on a Ndebele community that is haunted by traumatic memories of the state-orchestrated post-colonial violence, this study probes how new media are empowering the subjugated communities to recount, mediate and share their memories of past events that remain occluded, repressed and criminalised in official discourses. This research is premised on a social constructionist understanding that the media do not reflect a reality “out there”, but rather construct our knowledge of the social world. Drawing upon theoretical insights from cultural studies, this study examines how Ndebele communities employ new media artefacts to construct, in other words, their lived experiences, and to reconstruct their historical imaginations. This study is framed within a qualitative methodology, as the aim was to explore meaning-making practices in cyberspace. The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), a strand of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), was selected as a method for analysing how language use serves to reproduce and challenge asymmetrical power relations amongst social groups. Data was selected purposively from three news websites, and genres such as editorials, opinion pieces, discussion forums, YouTube videos and readers’ comments were analysed to make sense of the reconstructions of Ndebele public memories. The research findings indicate that Ndebele people are employing new media to recollect, preserve and transmit their pre-colonial and post-colonial memories in ways that not only repudiate hegemonic Zimbabwean Nationalism, but also contribute to the resurgence of Ndebele secessionist imaginations. Thus, new media are sites of memory that are not only transforming and democratising the processes of narrating, preserving and disseminating historical memories, but also are reinvigorating and heightening Ndebele nationalism.