Doctoral Degrees (Journalism)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Journalism) by browse.metadata.advisor "Wasserman, Herman"

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    Manufacturing cultural capital : arts journalism at Die Burger (1990-1999)
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011-12) Botma, Gabriel Johannes; Wasserman, Herman; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Journalism.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study examines the discursive role and positioning of arts journalism at Die Burger during a period of radical transformation in South African society. The study is conducted within a critical-cultural paradigm. Arts journalists are considered to be manufacturers of cultural capital, a term devised by Pierre Bourdieu as part of his comprehensive field theory framework. While Bourdieu uses cultural capital in the main to describe the role of education and culture in the maintenance of elite power hierarchies, this study investigates how the nature of cultural capital at Die Burger was affected by power shifts when competing elites jostled for dominance in a post-apartheid dispensation. By drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse, the focus of research further incorporates the discursive positioning of arts journalists in their coverage of arts and cultural events in the 1990s in relation to shifting configurations of power. The argument is that arts journalism at Die Burger can be situated within networks of power and thus contributed to the structuring of post-apartheid society. In the words of Antonio Gramsci, arts journalists became involved in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggles. Flowing from these theoretical departure points, the study identifies critical discourse analysis (CDA) as an appropriate research method for textual analysis and adapts a five-phase model suggested by Teun van Dijk as part of his contextual CDA approach. The analysis thus focuses in turn on the context of discourse, discursive struggles between arts journalists and political journalists, strategies of classification used by arts journalists, emerging themes of discourse in arts journalism, and how the selection and presentation of arts journalism on news and arts pages were influenced by various factors, including the personal background and experiences of arts journalists (The concept of Bourdieu’s “habitus”). To affect triangulation and enhance the textual analysis, the study also employs semi-structured indepth interviews with arts journalists who were prominent at Die Burger in the 1990s. The study found that arts journalists were at the intersection of different and often diverging and contradictory power-points in post-apartheid discourses at the newspaper. On the one hand, some arts journalists embraced a legacy of editorial independence at the arts desk and sometimes created oppositional discourses to the official political view of the newspaper: for instance on the issue of alleged “collective guilt” for Afrikaners and whether Naspers should appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to explain its role in supporting the National Party (NP) during apartheid. On the other hand, many arts journalists shared the editor’s apparent aversion to the international cultural boycott supported by the ANC and harboured some of the same skepticism about the so-called Africanisation of society and resultant attacks on Eurocentrism in the arts. This study -- the first on this level to focus on Afrikaans arts journalism since 1994 -- represents a significant contribution to knowledge in the under-researched field of arts journalism in South Africa. Its purpose and process has furthermore developed theoretical and methodological innovations which can enrich the field of journalism studies.
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    Mass media, lifestyle and young adults’ (un)reflexive negotiation of social and individual identities in Windhoek
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012-03-12) Fox, Thomas Arthur; Wasserman, Herman; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Journalism.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The rapidly growing presence of old and new media in postcolonial Namibia, particularly from the decade after the turn of the Millennium, has significance for cultural and identity transformations in the country. Formerly entrenched social identities, shaped by restrictive colonialism and indigenous traditions, appear to be under pressure as shifts become apparent in the face of globalisation. This thesis examines the characteristics of change from the perspective of young adults’ mediated experiences in the city of Windhoek. The research constitutes a cultural study that addresses the current knowledge gap regarding how growing local and global media presences are increasingly situated in youth identity and cultural lifestyle spaces. Degrees of reflexive response to mediated information and entertainment are examined in an attempt to understand awareness of and reaction to local and global power narratives situated in actors’ relationships with media. It was found that participants responded positively to the novelty and opportunities that global media offered for identity and lifestyle negotiations, while also revealing ontological anxieties about erosion of ‘traditional’ culture, and concern about absence of recognition and representation of the ‘local’ in global media productions. This led to the research conceptually establishing three participant orientations to media: cultural expropriationist, cultural traditionalist and cultural representationalist. The study concluded that while media seemed to be instrumental in identity and cultural change, social tension over matters of culture appeared to be emerging.